


Linked

by Chekhov



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Crowley Loves Kids (Good Omens), Crowley and Aziraphale have another row about theology and philosophy, Crowley and Aziraphale share 1 braincell, M/M, Oh no we're handcuffed together whatever shall we do, nothing really bad happens
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-25
Updated: 2019-09-10
Packaged: 2020-07-19 13:02:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 23,740
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19974511
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chekhov/pseuds/Chekhov
Summary: After Crowley's uncouth suggestion at the Arrangement in Wessex, Crowley and Aziraphale's potential cooperation is still up in the air. Then, just as the angel is starting to relax, he is abruptly summoned to inspect a demon 'caught' in a demon trap. This is definitely an accident, by all accounts. Crowley definitely did not set this up. And he, Aziraphale, is most certainly very miffed about it and not secretly pleased to see the Serpent of Eden at all. And what if he has to pretend to 'interrogate' this demon for a few days to keep up appearances? They can at least catch up over some wine. What could go wrong?





	1. Linked

\------------------------------------------

“Master Fell, Master Fell! He’s got one! He’s caught a demon!”

Aziraphale paused his quill, hovering it barely a millimeter over the parchment he had been bent over in a desperate attempt not to smear. Despite his best efforts, a sizeable splotch was already planted squarely in the middle of the meticulously penned script. A fuzzy puddle of black seeped into the second half of a word, making it look like an entirely different, slightly dirtier word (literally and metaphorically speaking).

He heaved an impatient sigh and then gave up on fixing his letter and instead focused on fixing his face into a serene smile in time to turn around to the voice that had called out to him. 

“What was that, Ismail?” he asked the child in the doorway. 

“It’s Master Nanael - he’s caught a demon in your magic circle!” the boy gasped. 

At the mention of the familiar name Aziraphale’s lips pulled taut, clinging desperately to the upturned corners of the smile like a thin sheet clinging to a clothesline in hurricane level winds. “Has he now,” he asked, doing his best to keep his voice neutral.

“It’s great and big and writhing, and as terrible as—As—” The boy drew one excited breath after the other, clearly too caught up in talking to remember to regulate his lungs. “As anything!”

“Terrible, is it?” Aziraphale asked without much concern. “More terrible than the cat he trapped in his net only three days prior?” 

“Much more,” the star-eyed lad assured him. 

Aziraphale’s shoulders sagged in defeat. The child did look rather taken with this new ‘demon’ they had managed to acquire. It was probably worth checking on, at the very least to release the poor creature from their clutches before they caused it any unnecessary harm. “Right then,” he said. “I’ll be along in a bit.”

“I’ll let Nanael know you’re coming!” Ismail promised and whipped himself through the stone doorway again, heels eagerly kicking up clouds of sand from the floor. Some of it settled on the rugs lining the room and Aziraphale reached out, sweeping his wrist loosely to beckon about a bit of a breeze and clean up the knitted threads into their previously spotless state. Then he leaned back against the desk and took another look at his unfinished project. 

_Heavenly Report to Archangel Gabriel from Principality_ _Aziraphale_ – read the first line.

_ First of all, I hope this report finds you well _ , continued the second.  _ I am writing to summarize the previous 10 years of my work in the human city of Bukhara and recount my accomplishments and the progress of the Heavenly duties bestowed upon me.  _

The third line, as promised, summarized the previously mentioned accomplishments and progresses. It was long – long enough to make the fourth line seem less significant, more like a Post Script, or an afterthought, inserted casually and only as a result of there being remaining parchment that needed to be filled (notwithstanding the fact that parchment always stretched itself out to be the exact length it needed to be in order to accommodate Aziraphale’s letters). 

The fourth line read:  _ I also wanted to mention how grateful I am for your thoughtfulness in sending the angel Nanael to help me in my duties. _

The fourth line was, by and large, NOT a lie. Aziraphale _ did _ want to mention how grateful he was. He  _ wanted _ to mention it – and he  _ would  _ mention it, of course - had he actually been grateful. 

Except he wasn’t, so as much as he  _ wanted _ to mention it, he couldn’t. Because there was nothing to mention. 

But he was very careful not to let this part show. 

The fifth line read:  _ Nanael is doing his best to adjust to the intricacies of human interaction, but, being a truly exemplary being who knows perfection lends itself only to the Almighty, he is not prideful and admits that it has been difficult for him to avoid making mistakes. _

Which was a very roundabout and convoluted way of saying – Nanael was a straight up bother. But Aziraphale would never say that.

The sixth line was bolder: _ I do grow concerned for him at times, however. Although he is indubitably doing his best to perform his duties as expected, he often forgets to take the necessary steps to disguise his own miracles to fit the natural flow of events. At times, he scares the humans around him. At other times, he raises their suspicious a bit too much. Although I appreciate his dedication to his temporary assignment on Earth, I am unsure whether continuing his mentorship is appropriate, given the fact that his talents lie elsewhere. _

Which was another roundabout and convoluted way of saying: Nanael was terrible around humans, and Aziraphale wanted him out of his hair as quickly as possible. 

But Aziraphale would never say that.

_ The work of scouting demons is not one to be taken lightly,  _ the seventh line continued, and the parchment scrunched up the letters here to make the section seem smaller, less imposing, _ and although I understand that, given the length of my residence here I am a suitable tutor for him, I believe my duty to thwart the demon Crowley must take prece—  _

Here the blotch had obscured the rest of the word, and the text ended. 

Aziraphale glanced over his shoulder and then turned back at the paper, tapping the corner of it encouragingly. In response, the ink stain wiggled out of it, leaving the letter as spotless as before he had been interrupted. He picked up his quill again.

_ I believe my duty to thwart the demon Crowley must take precedence _ , he wrote. 

He regarded the paper thoughtfully. 

This was not altogether a lie either. Or at least that’s what Aziraphale told himself. It was true that he was concerned with Crowley – but perhaps not in the same sense as Heaven hoped he would be. Then again, Crowley was not concerning in the same sense as Heaven claimed. Whether or not to make this judgement was above Aziraphale or not, he did not know. Or, if he did know, he pretended to ignore it by remaining neutrally vague in all statements about the demon. 

Still, this was a minor detail and besides, that particular can of worms could be opened at a later date, when he was less busy. He set it on his metaphorical shelf which contained the other cans of worms he promised to deal with later, such as his enjoyment of food and theatre and other human inventions. 

The angel rose from the table, readjusted the belt on his robe and marched for the door.

***

He expected an animal. A mangy stray, perhaps, the kind that were common around these parts of town. 

But Ismail did use the word ‘terrible’ so for a moment his imagination lapsed into a slightly more interesting list of options. A local lizard? An exotic chicken escaped from the breeder who had recently moved in up the street? Or – Heaven forbid – an alligator? Nothing was outside the realm of possibility when Nanael was involved. The fact that he kept ‘borrowing’ Aziraphale’s magic circles to use as ‘demon traps’ did not help the relationship between them. 

What Aziraphale did not expect to find when he was finished huffing and puffing his way up the stairs to the observatory and rounded the corner – was Crowley. 

Sitting on the floor. 

In his magic circle. 

Legs folded in a knot in front of him in a way that was simultaneously sultry but also a little bit awkward. 

Dark red hair, spilling in a braid over his shoulder, dipping out of sight on the darker robes with just a hint of red sewn into the seams. 

Aziraphale blinked hurriedly, realizing that he was, for some reason, concentrating on all the wrong details. None of that mattered. What mattered was that it  _ was _ Crowley. It  _ was _ a demon they’d captured. This was no fluke. 

“ _ You _ …!” he breathed – and it came out as more of a gasp than he had meant it to be.

Crowley’s head swiveled, and his hair whipped in a neat line along with him, traveling to the other shoulder. It was a choreographed motion, done with the intent of someone who had been sitting on the floor in a magic circle, pondering for at least 10 minutes how to make his ‘entrance’ as dramatic as possible without moving an inch to the left or the right. 

And Aziraphale didn’t know what was more endearing – that desperate attempt to harvest the maximum attention possible from a stranger who had successfully arrested him – or the fact that when Crowley realized it was  _ him _ at the door, his entire expression changed into a smile so ridiculously bright it might have put a few angels to shame. 

Then again, Aziraphale reasoned, fighting off the strangest urge to smile back, Crowley  _ had _ been an angel once. He was bound to be charismatic. Unfortunately it seemed to have effects on the wrong people. 

“Aziraphale,” Crowley crooned. His lips drew closed, transforming his open, shiny smile into an amused pucker. “Fancy meeting you here.”

“Fancy is the wrong term,” Aziraphale retorted. He paced closer and glanced about the room – but thankfully they were alone for now. “Though you do look it. What in the world are you doing here?”

“Oh, I just thought I’d pop on over to this side of the globe,” Crowley explained, leaning back on one arm casually and twisting his head about to follow Aziraphale with his eyes as he walked around the room, checking the windows nervously. “After that bout of useless Tempting in Wessex that you kept canceling out, I figured I might as well leave you to it and see what the rest of the world was up to. Went to China for a bit, lots happening there. Had a bit of a fling in India. Have you ever been?”

“A fling?” At this, Aziraphale did turn back to him and raised one delicate eyebrow. Then, before Crowley could explain himself, he decided they had more important things to discuss. “Of course I’ve been. Did you try the pomegranates? They are the most luscious when in season… Oh, and what about the rice cakes?”

Crowley began to wind up a sly grin again. It was knowing, and bemused. He made no attempt to interrupt the angel, who had already begun to gesture with his hands, forming his fingers into the shapes of the delightful rice-cakes he had just mentioned. By the time this grin was wide enough to show teeth, Aziraphale realized that he was once again derailing them and he took the hint with a silent but pointed little ‘ _ okay, thank you, I got it _ ,’ glare and stopped his rambling at once. 

“But never mind that,” he said, as if he had not been the one to get distracted. “When I asked you what you were doing here, I didn’t mean this city. I meant what you are doing here, in  _ my  _ magic circle.”

“Oh, is this yours?” Crowley asked, lifting up his robe needlessly to squint closer at the runes. “What a coincidence. Didn’t even notice.” 

“Crowley,” Aziraphale said in exasperation.

“What?” Crowley said. “I was caught!”

“Doing what?” The angel splashed his hands up impatiently. “Tempting the books off the shelves? Stealing rugs? What sorts of evil deeds can a demon of your caliber be possibly doing in this kind of place?”

Sporting a look of someone who is about to open his mouth to explain something in great detail, Crowley opened his mouth to explain something – in great detail. 

Fortunately he was saved by the sound of footsteps on the stairs. 

Both he and Aziraphale looked up at the same time in time to see a set of white robes hanging off of a rickety frame, topped with a turban that seemed entirely too large for the head it was balanced on. Overall, the construction was not unlike that of a praying mantis which had done its best attempt at dressing in human garb, with mixed results. 

“Nanael,” said Aziraphale. 

“Aziraphale,” said Nanael.

They stared at each other from opposite sides of the emotional spectrum. One – relieved. The other – as politely inconvenienced as he was going to be for the next 1000 years. Out of the corner of his eye Aziraphale could see Crowley’s head move back and forth, like he was tracking the movement of an invisible ball being passed between them. When he became still, it could be assumed that he had come to some sort of understanding about the situation. 

“Thank goodness you’re here,” Nanael said. “I sent that child after you, but he was incompetent as ever. I had to track him down in the courtyard, and he only told me he had found you and that you would come even though I specifically told him to– But nevermind. I’m so sorry about this. I should have just come to you the old way—”

Aziraphale held up his hand. “No, no, there’s no need for that. You know how the humans would talk if they saw something supernatural happening. We don’t need a repeat of last month.”

“Right, well,” Nanael twisted his robes in one hand and cast Crowley a nervous glance. “This is why I called you. I did as you said – and I caught a demon! He was here, in this room, and I lured him into the circle and activated it! And now he’s trapped! Can’t move at all! He said so himself!”

Aziraphale glanced at Crowley out of the corner of his eye. The demon turned his head a bit further away from Nanael, slid his hand up his cheekbone to his brow and mouthed ‘ _ Who is that guy? _ ’ conspiratorially. 

“Right,” the angel said, hurriedly refocusing his attention on his Heaven-sent charge. “That is indeed impressive, Nanael…”

The praise seemed to work its magic. “Isn’t it though? I’m so glad! After all those months of nothing – and finally, I’ve got one! I feel like things are really turning around, don’t you? I was afraid I might end up returning empty-handed, but after Head Office hears about this, they’ll surely let me stay a bit longer!”

“That is impressive!” Aziraphale repeated, voice strained now. “But I’m afraid there’s an issue.”

Nanael’s smile fell. “What issue? He’s defenseless. You said the circle would disable their connection to the Below. He can’t perform any curses in this state.”

Crowley, who was still looking at Aziraphale and shielding his expression from the extra person in the room, pouted theatrically. They were both well aware that, at this point, the magic of the circle Crowley was seated in had been ebbing out very gradually ever since the angel who had drawn it had arrived. There was not much there anymore, and if Crowley so wished, he could have rolled over the lines and suffered merely an itch of discomfort. 

But he didn’t. And when Aziraphale narrowed his eyes at him as if to ask ‘ _ What are you stalling for? Why aren’t you running _ ?’ he merely smiled an unusual smile and remained politely seated. 

“I understand I said that,” Aziraphale said, deciding that their prolonged silences were going to come into question soon. “But it isn’t as simple as that.”

“Why not?” Nanael asked. Now he was growing impatient as well. “We just have to smite him and it’ll be over.”

Shock flickered over Aziraphale’s face at the suggestion, and before he could school it into an impartial glare, Crowley finally spoke up. 

“Seems a bit overkill, doesn’t it? Two angels to one demon?” he said, turning to Nanael and propping up his hand on the lower one of his folded knees. “Hardly fair.”

“Silence, you wretched beast,” Nanael hissed back. “Fair isn’t a word you have claim to!” Crowley leaned away from him, clearly not fond of the spittle that came flying his way, but remained stubbornly within the confines of the useless circle. 

“That ain’t nice,” the demon pointed out, one corner of his mouth yanking down in disapproval. “You angels, I thought you were supposed to be nice.” He glanced back at Aziraphale. “Isn’t that in the rules or something? I feel like I remember that.”

The Principality on his left pursed his lips, but he did seem a bit sympathetic – except when it came to the fact that Crowley was definitely not helping either of them get out of this situation. 

It had to be up to him, then.

“Nanael, do you know who this is?” Aziraphale asked abruptly. 

The neighboring angel eyed Crowley with the same distrust Crowley was giving him. “A demon,” he said. 

“Not just any old demon,” Aziraphale pointed out. “Oh, no. This… what you have here, what you have managed to bring into our clutches… this is no ordinary imp, or warlock…” He began to pace around the circle, now finding a good excuse to run his eyes up and down Crowley’s attire. There had to be some inspiration there. The black, shimmering robes, the sleight of his jaw, behind the semi-transparent veil covering his eyes. His hands, thin and wiry, elegant, twisted at the wrist. His sharp knuckles, dragging curiously across the much softer lips as he waited for the judgement with a discreet lack of concern. The weave of the braid in his hair, lapping over each other like scales— _ That’s it! _

Aziraphale latched onto the detail and looked up, trying to instill the fear within Nanael in earnest now. “This creature we have contained here is far more powerful than that. He’s the cream of the crop of the Fallen. The Architect of the Original Sin!”

Nanael’s brow furrowed for a moment while the gears in his head turned. “You don’t mean…?”

“I do, my dear boy,” Aziraphale said in a tone that was most unnatural for him – too robust and attempting to boom in a valiant manner that did not at all become him. “What we have here… is the Serpent of Eden!” He threw his hand out, pointing it accusingly at the entity at his feet. The said entity leaned back a bit, but there was an amused eyebrow crooked at him as if to say ‘ _ really _ ?’

‘ _ Yes, really’ _ , Aziraphale replied with his eyebrows and jerked his chin a tiniest bit to add a nuance of, ‘ _ Play your part! _ ’

After something that resembled a barely-concealed sigh, Crowley grabbed the edge of his veil and dragged it across his face in a sarcastic attempt to imitate shyness, but the dry crack of his smile gave was to something much more natural to him. “You got me,” he purred. Then he uncoiled from the floor, the motion too smooth to resemble anything but a snake. At his full height, he seemed a bit more intimidating, even in the garb he was wearing. Despite the slope of his hip, jutted out at the usual angle, his shoulders were pulled back more broadly. He looked at Nanael like a cobra about to strike. 

“Well, sssince I’ve been introduced, I sssuppose there’s no need to act unfriendly,” he said. 

The angels recoiled – one with disgust, and the other with a knowing roll of his eyes. 

“Don’t fall for his tricks,” Aziraphale cautioned, straightening out a bit too quickly for how much concern he was looking to seed. He paced back the other way around the circle now, coming back to stand at Nanael’s side, feeling, for the first time, like a proper teacher. “He might tempt you in many ways, but you must remain ever vigilant.” He caught Crowley’s eye and for a tense second they held each other’s gaze. At the end of the wordless exchange Crowley looked, for some reason, more pleased than before, and Aziraphale felt somehow a little more naked, without having shed any of his clothes. Crowley was good at whatever it was he did, that much was certain. 

“How do I know if it’s Tempting me?” Nanael asked, interrupting their silent, unexplainable conversation. 

Aziraphale glanced at him out of the corner of his eye. “That’s the thing, my dear boy. He’s always Tempting you,” he explained. 

“Even now?” Nanael asked uncertainly. 

“Yes, of course.” Aziraphale’s eyes flickered back at Crowley. It seemed obvious to him. “Just look at him!”

Crowley, on the other hand, tilted his head towards them, for some reason bemused. “Angel,” he said a bit too gently for Aziraphale’s liking. “I’m not even doing anything.”

A small fire was starting underneath the angel’s cheeks. He still didn’t quite grasp why, but he knew it was Crowley’s fault. 

“You probably are!” Nanael hissed on his behalf. “You’re trying to breach our Heavenly light with your evil ways this whole time! I should have known! That’s why I let my defenses down! Well no more! The Principality Aziraphale of the Eastern Gate is here to smite you!”

Crowley’s eyebrows bounced upwards, and Aziraphale felt himself wince. As much blame as he wanted to place on the Adversary for all this senseless teas— that is, Tempting— smiting him was still not on the list. 

“Nanael, about that,” he began, as gently as possible while still trying to sound in charge. “Perhaps we should… hold off on the smiting.”

“Hold off?” Nanael’s head whirled around to him. “Why so?”

“Because,” Aziraphale said, and looked at Crowley. “Because.” He looked around the room. “Because…” He looked back at the demon. The golden eyes narrowed at him from behind the veil. They were warm, like honey dripping from a baked flatbread. Like butter melting over a heated slab.

Perhaps, he thought to himself wearily, the truth was going to be easier. 

“Because I want to talk to him.”

“Interrogate me,” Crowley corrected hurriedly. 

Aziraphale threw him a grateful look, and Crowley caught it. Then he returned to his act. 

“I see how this is,” the demon said, and adjusted his stance to be a little less sexual and a little more evil. “So, you want to play the long game, hm? Think you can get information out of me? Think I’ll tell you something important about what we have in store for you lot?” He hissed at them wickedly – or at least it looked wicked. Aziraphale sensed no venom.

Nanael, on the other hand, was convinced. He also seemed to be coming to an understanding. “Oh!” he gasped and turned to Aziraphale. “An interrogation! Do you think you could succeed? Get him to tell you what Hell has schemed up?”

“I could certainly give it my best shot,” Aziraphale said humbly. 

Crowley threw his braid off of his shoulder. “I’d love to see you try,” he spat. “You can torment me for days – weeks, even! I’ll never talk!” It was a bit too much, in Aziraphale’s opinion, but he had no room to scold the other if it would get them both out of his mess. Instead he just flattened his lips into an unamused half-glare and tried to impress upon the demon that he was pushing it. It didn’t work – Crowley was clearly enjoying the game.

“But how?” Nanael inquired. 

“Hm?” Aziraphale voiced distractedly.

“How are you going to make him talk?” 

Crowley looked at him as well, and then back at the minor angel. “Torture, I presume,” he said, a bit more casually. Then he looked back at Aziraphale. “That’s up to you, though, obviously.”

“I’ll think of something,” Aziraphale assured him. 

“Right, well, if you need ideas,” Crowley added. “I mean, because, you  _ are _ an angel, after all, and that’s not precisely your area of expertise… I have plenty of tortures I know of.” 

“Oh do you?” Aziraphale asked dryly, fighting the temptation to find this just a little bit amusing. “Any favorites?”

“A few,” Crowley admitted, flicking his tongue out to lick his upper lip. There was the briefest flash of white teeth – and it was threatening to stretch into a full grin. Something in Aziraphale’s stomach turned over, like an animal waking from a nap, hungry. Except it wasn’t the regular sort of hunger he was accustomed to. 

He cleared his throat and glanced away, just in time to catch Nanael’s head swiveling between them with the look of someone who was aware that he was just on the brink of a conversation he was not allowed to take part in. He and Crowley were also there, on that edge. They were too close to—to something. He wasn’t sure what. 

Crowley seemed to know. He looked way too satisfied with himself. This was  _ his _ doing after all. 

The hungry animal slumbering in Aziraphale’s stomach grumbled once again. Unwilling to think about what it was he was craving, the angel made a split second decision.

“Let’s cut this short,” he said and snapped his fingers. 

The miracle wasn’t fully formed in his mind’s eye when he performed it. To be honest (and he, as an angel, had to be), it was only the intent of what he wanted to do – not the actual plan. That was, perhaps, a poor idea because a second later Crowley’s amused grin accused him silently that now  _ he _ was the one being overkill. 

“Really, Angel?” he asked, lifting his arm and inspecting it. “This…?”

Although he’d never admit it, he was almost as surprised as Crowley was when he looked down between them at the gold chain that had materialized out of nowhere – looping around both of their wrists and linking them together in the middle across the line of the magic circle with barely a meter of lead. 

“Is that going to be enough?” Nanael asked uncertainly. 

The chain looked a bit too delicate to serve as any real restraint, it was true, but Aziraphale hadn’t thought that far. “Yes,” he lied. His fingers wrapped around the loose links on his side and he gave a pointed tug. “With this he’ll be bound by my magic, and the effects of the circle will remain active, preventing him from using his power.”

It was moot point to bring up, but two out of the three people in the room knew that it was utter bullocks. That was the majority, and Aziraphale felt that was enough to justify not saying anything on the matter.

Crowley didn’t move, but he did look extremely amused. 

Aziraphale narrowed his eyes at him accusingly. He took a step back, gave a harder pull and Crowley stumbled in surprise after him, right out of the circle. While Nanael jumped back in fear, Aziraphale took his chance to wipe the smug smile off of his own face and replace it with a glare at Crowley, who was not giving half as much effort to make his cheerful expression any less incriminating. 

“Right,” said the Principality, trying to stand up straight and adjust his robe with his free hand. “If you’ll excuse me, I have a bit of work to do with this one. Nanael, I trust you to take care of my duties while I’m busy.”

“Of course,” said the angel, and gave a sort of half-bow. “How long do you reckon it’ll take?” 

Aziraphale shrugged. “Can’t much say,” he admitted. In truth, he didn’t much care. He was simply wanting to take his leave. Hopefully, the vague reply would be enough to keep his charge away for at least a couple of days. (And not that he would ever say it out loud, but Crowley’s company was much preferred to that of his angelic peer.)

Perhaps he was being too obvious about it, because as he turned around to leave, he could feel the strain on the chain as Crowley leaned back just long enough to wink and purr: “Oh, it’ll be a while.”

Although Aziraphale would never admit it as he dragged the wily demon along after him on their makeshift leash, he would later – thousands of years later – fondly think back to the memory and realize that he had taken the demon’s promise as a sort of challenge. 


	2. Chained

Crowley regained consciousness at the mercy of a very human sensation that could only be categorized as ‘a discomforting lack of air’. He had almost forgotten the events of the previous night, and for a moment the fact that he couldn’t breathe startled him. Sure, he was a demon and therefore breathing was optional - but then, so was sleeping. He wasn’t picky about those things anyway. It was nice to just let his body run on autopilot sometimes. 

He thought maybe he had drunkenly wandered into a canal and tried to go to sleep underwater again. (An assumption that may or may not have been supported by previous events.) Then, after a disoriented second of groping at his face, he realized that his hands were simply clutching layers upon layers of blankets – knitted ones, mostly undyed white wool, with a few choice blues running through the stitch. It definitely helped in solving the puzzle of who they belonged to. He picked one up with his hand, inspected it closely, and then immediately became distracted with the other thing – the golden chain – which was still sitting in a loose loop around his boney wrist. 

Right. He was a... prisoner. That had happened.

And it must mean Aziraphale was not far - somewhere in this bed, in fact. And wasn’t that curious to think about? So he did think about it. Then he tried to look around and found himself blinded by the sunlight spilling in from a window on the eastern side of the room.

“Ng,” he voiced, and squinted at it with particular venom. But annoying as it was, it was that very same sunlight that helped him follow the trail of the glinting links, all the way across the rest of the bed to the opposite corner where a second figure was seated. Aziraphale’s back was propped up on multiple pillows and he was holding a book on his knee – but his eyes had already abandoned it graciously and settled on Crowley. 

“Finally come to, have you?” the angel tisked. “You were out for nearly 10 hours.”

The other’s bright aura, enhanced by the golden glow of sunlight, made him look even more angelic than usual. His curls were practically glowing, and despite his scolding there was a calm, ethereal look to him that Crowley had not been privy to since... well, at least since before the birth of Christ. Those had been simpler times, and he had thought of them fondly. Nowadays it always seemed that Aziraphale was worried about one thing or another every time they met up, and it always took at least a couple of bottles of wine or mead for Crowley to tease the tension out of his shoulders.

Which was perhaps counterintuitive to the whole Demon and Angel business - opposite sides and all that... but those were simply details. And Crowley didn’t like details. He liked to live in the moment. Currently, that moment involved staring at the angel, backlit by the sunrise, in quiet satisfaction. 

No, that wasn’t any better, was it? 

Crowley scowled and put the blanket back over his face, trying to convince it to return to the task of suffocating him. “Well ’s not my fault,” he grumbled in reply. “You’re the one who found the wine.”

“I didn’t force-feed you three jugs,” Aziraphale reminded him with a tut. “And I wasn’t the one who decided to ‘sleep it off’ instead of sobering up.”

“I like sleeping,” Crowley defended from under his blanket. It was too warm for the blistering heat that threatened to yank the temperatures up by the metaphorical fishing line by mid-day, but it smelled nice. Smelled like Aziraphale, too – but those two facts were entirely unrelated to one another.

He huffed a breath of air into the knitted fabric to infuse it with his own scent and continued: “Anyway, I thought it was par for the course. A part of your plan to torture me.”

“Ah yes, the torture of alcohol, and grapes and imported mangoes,” Aziraphale said. “Truly, enduring all of those things must have hurt you a great deal. How horrid. But you are the expert, after all...”

Crowley clawed the blanket away from his face again to squint up at the other. The events of the previous night were finally coming back to him. “The torture was watching you eat most of it,” he said. “While I, your prisoner, sat by suffering in hungry silence.”

“Oh come off it!” For some reason the angel looked offended. “I offered you some! You began to do wicked things to the mango with your tongue – I  _ had _ to take it away!”

“I  _ am _ a demon you know,” Crowley protested. “That’s my job, wicked things!”

“And then,” Aziraphale continued, “you tried to stick the grapes up your nose.”

“I was already quite drunk by that point,” Crowley said in his own defense, although his expression was a little more uncertain, as if he didn’t quite know why he had done so either.

“It’s wasteful,” scolded Aziraphale. “This is why I don’t trust you.”

“Because of the grapes?” Crowley asked. 

“No, not because of the grapes.” The angel wiggled his shoulders and adjusted his tunic. He reminded Crowley of a little field mouse which began to groom and rub its own face when restless. (Crowley quite liked those field mice. They made an excellent breakfast.) “Because when I told you that you need to stay out of sight, you turned it into a game of ‘let’s hide in the wine cellar’. Because when we were supposed to be laying low, you decided to get drunk. Because you’re making a joke out of this—It isn’t funny Crowley! Don’t laugh!” he admonished with his most potent glare, which was almost harsh enough to rustle a leaf, probably. Crowley did his best to stifle the chuckles brimming in the back of his throat and pretend to look properly guilty, but Aziraphale was going on without checking whether or not his scolding was effective, so the hard work of pouting went mostly unappreciated. “This is a big problem. We shouldn’t have drank last night – in fact, we shouldn’t have spent the night together—”

Deciding to go for a different method, Crowley rolled up on his elbow, mouth parting in mock shock. “Us–We spent the night… Together? Was I really that drunk? I don’t remember us… I think I would remember if we—”

There was a beat of silence and then - at last, sweet success.

“Oh, you wicked thing!” Aziraphale gasped. There was the briefest flush of pink in his cheeks – and even if it only lasted a millisecond, it was enough for Crowley to commit it to memory and mentally hang it up next to his other beloved Aziraphale Faces. (Of which there were many. He was not the sort to collect physical possessions; as a demon, vices were encouraged, of course, but so was Sloth, and Crowley never did enjoy lugging objects around with him. Collecting the faces a certain angel made, though – THAT was where it was at. There was a never-ending supply of them, and he made sure to never lose a single one. If they began to fade, all he had to do was coax a similar expression out of the other and replenish the stock.) 

His dealer of The Goods (namely, the face-maker who made the faces), meanwhile, continued his Scandalized Tirade: “That’s not what I meant! No, of course we didn’t—As if I’d ever—I’m an  _ angel _ !” Aziraphale was either truly offended, or he was putting a lot of effort into looking offended. Crowley wasn’t sure which one it was right at that moment, but he was getting a show. Aziraphale’s expression always had the rather impressive quality of broadcasting every single emotion that played out in his mind. None were too small, or too embarrassing, or too trivial to not be tucked lovingly into the quirk of an eyebrow, the pucker of his lips, or the scrunch of his little upturned nose. Had Crowley been a cartographer, he would surely be able to map his way across that face with ease in order to discover the true underlying emotion behind his vehement defenses of his own ‘purity’. He tried to do so now.

“—and besides,” Aziraphale huffed – as he had been huffing away for the past 30 seconds, “do you really think everyone slots a sin into every single sentence they say? I merely meant that we were  _ in this room _ , together. Existing in the same space! For us, that’s blasphemy as is! I’m an angel! You’re a demon! We’re not meant to be helping each other out or sharing wine!”

Crowley smiled airily. The length of the tirade allowed him to check off his list of geographical abnormalities – the intensity of the tint on Aziraphale’s cheeks, the nervous flash of teeth worrying his bottom lip, the mountain range of wrinkles between his neat eyebrows which had formed somewhere during his self-defense.

His conclusion was this: Aziraphale was not mad, not really. But he was doing his best to act it. Everything was normal, then. This was a charade he was all too familiar with.

“I’m meant to smite you, don’t you understand that?” the angel continued, and Crowley hurriedly stopped smiling and tried his best to nod along seriously. “What if Nanael had come to find me last night and seen us?”

“He would have seen me doing indecent things to a mango,” Crowley said. 

“Exactly!”

“Who is this Nanael guy anyway?” Crowley asked, stretching back out on the blankets and cracking his back. Now that he had done his usual amount of Being Indecent and Evil, and Aziraphale had done his usual amount of Pretending To Be Offended, he felt they had ticked off the boxes and were back on track and could talk about what was actually important. “You didn’t mention him last night. An angel, is he?”

“He’s been sent here to study under me,” Aziraphale admitted, settling back into the pillows and returning to polite conversation as smoothly as Crowley. “Because I’m the expert on all things human, evidently.” 

“You don’t like him,” Crowley said. It wasn’t a question. 

Aziraphale made a small, choked noise in the back of his throat that was a lot like a whine of defeat. “He’s rude! He knows nothing about human customs, Crowley! He treats them like mules! He asks them odd questions! He’s ruined the reading group I’ve started up, scared everyone away! He doesn’t want to learn about human culture, he doesn’t want to try the food—he doesn’t want to do any of it!”

Crowley was nodding along sympathetically. “Why’s he even here, then?”

The angel’s shoulders sagged. “Gabriel seems to think I need the support – he mentioned last time we met that he feels sorry that I’m stuck here.”

“But you’re not sorry,” Crowley said, casting him a long glance. “You like it here.”

“Yes, of course I like it,” bit out the angel. “But I can’t very well come out and say that, can I? They think I must be lonely here without company.”

“But you  _ do _ have company,” Crowley retorted defensively.

“Yes,” said Aziraphale, in a voice that was a bit softer than before. “But I can’t tell them about  _ that _ either, can I?”

They were silent for a moment, sharing a sideways glance that felt a little deeper than the rest of the conversation. The said depth was uncomfortable, like a swimming hole that looked alluring from the edge, and then when you looked down, you saw a darker color that made you shiver, made you realize there was much more to it, and you weren’t suddenly quite sure if you could make it across safely. 

Aziraphale yanked his feet out of the water first and looked away. Crowley followed suit. 

“Anyway,” Aziraphale said, restarting the conversation for both their sakes. “I think the bigger issue, more so than Nanael, is what we’re going to do with you.” 

Crowley lifted his wrist and jingled the chain. “Well, you’ve already shackled me... so... Torture?” he suggested, a bit too hopefully. 

The angel granted him a half-hearted glare of reprimand. “Enough, you. What else was I supposed to do? Keep you in that circle? It wasn’t even active! You could have escaped at any moment!”

“I knew that,” the demon said.

“Then why didn’t you?” Aziraphale pushed the book off of his lap and sat up to face the demon in his bed a bit more head-on. “Why did you not do anything? Why did we have to play this whole game of ‘ _ oh, it’s the terrible Serpent of Eden _ !’” 

“I found that part rather flattering, actually,” Crowley admitted with a grin. He began to draw his robes up about himself in a coy way again. “Didn’t know you thought so highly of me.”

“Stop the temptations, you fiend, this is not the time,” Aziraphale complained, puckering his lips with (clearly fake) puritan disapproval. (Crowley wanted, desperately, to interrupt him and ask when it  _ would  _ be the time, but Aziraphale was plowing onward without giving him that chance.) “I had no other choice! I had to make it seem like smiting you was not a logical option! If I didn’t come up with  _ something _ , I would have had to at least discorporate you!” 

“I appreciate you not doing that,” Crowley admitted. “You know how annoying it is to apply for a new body down there? And they don’t even let you pick! And most of ‘em are ugly.”

“Yes, Heaven forbid you come back without enough sexual appeal to tempt a mango to sin,” Aziraphale quipped. 

Crowley shot him a teasing grin. “I don’t know about the mango, but it certainly made an impression on you, for you to keep bringing it up,” he pointed out. 

The glare coming from Aziraphale’s eyes was at odds with how pink his ears suddenly were, but there was discomfort there as well, and those blue eyes were beginning to take on a decidedly disappointed tinge. 

Feeling like he had, perhaps, toed over the invisible line, the demon decided to reel it in and get back on topic. “Angel, I didn’t want to escape because I figured that…. Given who was there as a witness… letting me go would have been rather bad for your record.”

The Principality’s jawline, which had just a moment ago tightened in tension, softened into its natural roundness again. He turned back to his companion with a concerned look. “Bad for my record? How do you mean?”

“I mean,” Crowley said, looking up at the intricately carved ceiling above them and gesturing vaguely. “There we were. You finally caught a demon – and you have another angel with you, clearly watching. And if that demon were to simply… get up and prance out of your magic circle and run off… well… how does that look for you? Letting me get away that easily? Makes you look rather incompetent, doesn’t it?”

They were both quiet for a moment. Then, suddenly, Aziraphale’s face was wilting like a flower as the realization dawned on him. At the same time a second, parallel train of thought was whistling its departure. “As incompetent as someone who gives away his sword to the first humans and lets them escape the Garden of Eden?” he asked morosely. 

Crowley’s neck snapped back at him, realizing what he’d just kick-started. “Wh—No, I didn’t mean it like—I just…” he sputtered. 

“As incompetent as someone who’s met the demon he’s been assigned to thwart a handful of times every century, and has failed to do anything about it for the past 5000 years? As incompetent,” the angel continued drearily, “as someone who’s been considering an Arrangement with the said demon to do the minimum amount of work possible to complete their God-given assignment…?”

_ You’ve been considering it? _ Crowley wanted to ask, but it seemed like maybe this was a bad time to talk business.

“Angel,” he said instead, sitting up and moving closer. “Don’t do that to yourself. Look, you’re not as bad as all that! You’ve got me now, haven’t you?” He held up his wrist and jingled the chain again. “You’ve caught me! I’m your prisoner! You’re going to torture some information out of me!”

“Crowley, I’m not going to torture you,” the angel snapped impatiently, though his voice still sounded a bit damp around the edges. “Will you give up on that already?”

“Egh,” said the demon, “Could be fun, never know.” 

“Stick to molesting fruit and leave me out of your twisted games,” Aziraphale replied. He still seemed put out. “Anyway, you’re right. If you had run off, Nanael might have gone back to Heaven and reported that I’ve let a demon escape out from under my nose. Who knows what Gabriel would think about  _ that _ .”

“He can think whatever he wants, because you didn’t let it happen,” Crowley assured him. He was aware that comforting was not exactly a demonic quality, but he probably had ulterior motives. Or he would work on getting some, eventually, when the blessed angel looked less distractingly mopey. “You got a demon – without much effort, I might add. That’ll surely count for something Up There, won’t it?”

The look Aziraphale gave him was odd – pained and thankful, and bitter all at once. It was an odd clash of emotions for one face to house, and no one could have pulled it off as well as he did. Crowley considered saving that one to his collection, but it made him Feel Things for a hot second, so he decided against it. 

“Of course, it  _ would _ count for something,” the angel muttered. “Except I didn’t do anything, did I? A certain demon was the one who stepped into the trap willingly.” His eyes made the tiniest attempt to flicker back to Crowley’s, and then he seemed to immediately change his mind and look somewhere else. 

A good choice, thought Crowley, who quickly joined him in the activity of Not Looking Anywhere In Particular. 

“It’s not that I stepped into the trap willingly,” he protested. “I just happened to be passing by is all. Thought I’d say hello, see if I could thwart some of your Good Deeds. I knew you were about - you leave a trail of happy book sellers in your wake anywhere you go.”

If he had been looking at Aziraphale at that moment, he would have caught the ghost of a smile on the other’s lips. But he wasn’t looking.

They were silent, each thinking over the situation in turn. 

This was a familiar lull in the conversation, but at the same time not. Historically, their meetings were more short-lived, spaced out. They didn’t spend enough time together to get this close to discussing how much time they spent together. Every few decades, they would meet ‘on accident’, talk, share wine, crack a few jokes back and forth. It was always a chat on the yawning edge of Noah’s ark, or a brief respite in the shade of a tree somewhere in Africa, or a morose moment of standing shoulder to shoulder looking up at a crucifix, or an offering to share oysters in Rome, or a friendly bit of banter echoing around inside a metal suit (what will the humans think of next? Something more comfortable, Crowley hoped.)

Anyways, it was always something just vague enough to be passed off as chance. They occupied a relatively small space – and truly, the Earth was tiny in comparison to the rest of the Universe, the demon reasoned. To find yourself on the same planet as another non-human creature when there were so many others available, not including other dimensions, other forms of existence that were available to them… well, it was the same as two birds being in a forest full of trees, but only being able to land on one specific tree comfortably. They were simply bound to land on the same branch eventually, weren’t they?

Crowley was used to this pattern, and it was as familiar to him now as the revolution of the earth and its never-ending elliptical swing around the neighboring star. Aziraphale never seemed to mind seeing him as much as he pretended to, and Crowley always took care to only antagonize Aziraphale to his limits and never beyond that. To all things – balance. As winter to summer, and as day to night.

But this time was a bit unusual. Like a hot day in the middle of winter – spending the night drinking together and then not being able to simply go their separate ways and ignore the implications of all of it for the next odd decade or so. Ignoring was crucial to maintaining the delicate illusion covering up the fact that they weren’t  _ supposed _ to enjoy each other’s company but they did anyway – or at least, that’s what Crowley thought Aziraphale’s stance was. The angel’s ability to escape the tight clutches of uncomfortable truths would have put a serpent’s slithering to shame. 

Aziraphale did not slither like a serpent, however – instead he wiggled. But he wiggled well, and he managed to wiggle himself out of any iconoclastic behavior – be it Crowley’s or his own – and then settle down on something soft and comfortable and steer them back around to a normal conversation as if nothing had ever happened. 

This did not surprise Crowley. In Heaven, avoidance was an extreme sport. Ignoring was a valued technique to scoring Grace points. And if you didn’t play well enough, if you didn’t have what it took to overlook a moral contradiction and then dribble more empty Praise, well…

They kicked you off the team. 

Crowley allowed his nose to scrunch up for a moment, breaking through the façade of empty Not Looking At Anything In Particular. Then he suppressed the wayward emotion (a sport that he was actually good at) and checked in on Aziraphale to confirm that the angel was, once again, Ignoring to the best of his ability. In any case, his face was lost in thought.

Crowley looked back down, and wondered if he should give Ignoring a go, too. It was probably the safer thing to do. But he’d never been particularly good at it, which was, coincidentally, why he was no longer an angel. 

And anyway, Ignoring wasn’t  _ fun _ . Wasn’t as fun as showing up to tease Aziraphale and collect memories of all of his faces. Wasn’t as fun as finally being able to complain about the humans to someone who would finally understand. Wasn’t as fun as drinking late into the night and talking for hours about what they’d seen at opposite sides of the globe, sharing stories, guessing at what would happen next.

Yes, maybe that kind of thing wasn’t exactly in his job description, but Crowley’s own stance on all of this hubub about Doing The Right (or, well, Wrong, in his case) Thing and Acting Like You’re Supposed To was that  _ he was a demon, for Satan’s Sake _ , and since he was properly damned, getting himself twisted into a knot over what someone else thought he ought to do was an activity reserved only for when he was a snake, and when getting twisted into a knot was comfortable. 

For all other occasions, he boldly went on and Didn’t Care. 

Which was different from Ignoring, mind you, because it was a more conscious, cooler version of it. 

“Nanael will expect this interrogation to take our time,” the angel said finally. 

Crowley looked up. Aziraphale was still staring straight ahead, but he seemed to have come to some sort of soothing conclusion to his internal moral turbulence. “So for now, our goal is to figure out how to get you out of my clutches.”

“Without making you look bad,” Crowley added. 

“Yes, thank you for your concern about my reputation.” For some reason the angel didn’t sound too thankful. “But this is more of a problem for you, isn’t it? If Hell finds out you were captured by an angel – won’t that be an issue?”

The demon jerked his shoulders up without much concern. “They’ve got bigger things to worry about. Besides, they won’t know. My people don’t visit me often, you know. It’s mostly correspondence. As long as I’m seeding at least a little bit of evil and meeting my quotas, they’ll never suspect a thing.”

“Right.” It was strange, but Aziraphale did look relieved at that. “I suppose we both have quotas to get to. We can’t just sit in here and drink wine and do nothing.”

“Well—we could…” Crowley began to say, voice taking on an unusually hopeful note as his suggestion of their Arrangement resurfaced as an option. “Do you remember what I said in Wessex? I figure if neither of us does anything, it might as well be the exact same thing as—” 

“Crowley,” Aziraphale reprimanded patiently. “Not this again.”

The demon heaved a sigh of defeat. “Alright,” he groaned. “I suppose I am your prisoner. You’re in charge, angel.” 

The tiny, self-satisfied, guilty-pleasure smile on the angel’s face, mysteriously lewd and absolutely pure at the same time, was enough to clear the demon’s schedule in seeding vices for the next week  _ at least _ . “That’s right,” he said with another signature wiggle, and jingled the chain from his side. “I am, aren’t I?”

In that moment, Crowley could feel his chest physically constrict with a feeling of raw, unadulterated  _ want _ . 

It was that uncomfortable, body-wrecking desire you felt when you weren’t sure what it was you wanted but knew that you  _ wanted it badly _ . It was the thing that drove humans to drinking – to drugs – to stumbling out into the streets to look for physical comfort in a stranger they’d never met – and, eventually, some years down the line, to going down to their kitchen at 3 in the morning only to squint blearily into the refrigerator without taking anything out of it – all to satisfy some unnamed, unrelenting craving. 

As a demon, Crowley was well attuned to this feeling. Just like angels could feel love and home in on it, creatures of the occult could feel this deep itch of dissatisfaction, of unfulfillment, of animalistic, selfish demand. Be it Lust, or Envy, or Greed, or any of them… it radiated off of humans, and it helped them pick out their victims, helped carry them through even the most complex Temptations. 

Of course the problem with having this radar, Crowley thought now with an inward sigh, was that when  _ you _ were the one giving off that exact flavor of want, there was nothing you could do about it. You couldn’t Tempt yourself. You could only stare up at the angel on the bed across from you and continue to want that awkwardly specific  _ something  _ until you eventually got so used to this feeling that it almost felt like home. 

He didn’t know it at the time, of course, but the feeling wasn’t actually originating from him. Or at least, not  _ only _ from him. It was just hard to tell, because, like in a duet, it’s difficult to know which one of you is singing louder when your partner is belting out the exact same song next to you. 

“So, what do you have in mind?” said the demon. 

“How about a stroll?” said the angel. 


	3. Shackled

It was evening when they finally ventured out. Aziraphale explained it would be safer this way – according to his calculations, Nanael was most likely to be sulking inside at dusk, because that was when the maximum amount of people were out and about the city, enjoying the first few cooler sundown hours. The minor angel didn’t like mingling – didn’t like it when people were walking between taverns and restaurants and inns. He didn’t like people at all, in fact. They were guaranteed to not be discovered among the crowds. 

But just in case he asked Crowley for a favor. 

The demon obliged, much to his surprise. It was awkward for them both at first, but by the time Aziraphale crossed the bridge over the canal and headed towards the main street, they’d settled into one another in a way that could almost be called comfortable. 

“You are quite heavy,” Aziraphale said under his breath, but his tone betrayed only amusement, and none of the resentment that should have come paired with holding a demon so close. He shifted his shoulders. “Oh, that tickles. Do mind what you’re doing under there, won’t you?”

It was probably his imagination, but he swore he could hear Crowley chuckle somewhere in the vicinity of his chin. He rolled the weight across his neck again and looked down at his arms, readjusting his grip on his companion. He was concentrating on this task, which was why he didn’t notice Ismail until after the boy has already noticed him. 

“Master Fell!” the child yelled, and then yelled again, but in a higher octave this time: “What is THAT?!”

Aziraphale, wary at first, stopped in his tracks, but as the young lad approached it became clear that his eyes held more fascination than fear. This warmed Aziraphale. “What does it look like?” he asked with a soft chuckle. 

“A giant snake!!” There it was again, the yelling. Human young were so very fond of being loud.

“So it is,” he agreed, and ran his gaze over the loops of smooth, black serpent he was holding. In places where it was hanging on, touches of its red underbelly could be visible. It really was a ridiculous sight – laid out flat, the snake was longer than he was – but he was attempting to cradle the thicker parts of it in his arms as if it were a much smaller, much more fragile creature. 

The said giant snake and its several coils began to move once more over Aziraphale’s shoulders, getting just a bit tighter for a moment before it lifted its large head up and turned its yellow gaze on the small human. 

Ismail flinched away – and immediately, Crowley froze. Then, he retreated and set his head back down on the angel’s shoulder. Fighting back a smile, the said angel stroked him soothingly. “Do you like snakes, Ismail?” he asked. 

“My father usually kills them,” admitted the boy. “They eat the chicken eggs.”

“All creatures must eat something,” Aziraphale said. “Snakes get hungry too.” 

“What does that one eat? It’s huge.” Judging by the look in Ismail’s eyes, he already anticipated the answer to his own question. Not that Aziraphale could blame him for jumping to conclusions. 

“Oh, he’s not too picky,” the angel replied teasingly. He glanced down at Crowley out of the corner of his eye. “Isn’t that right, dear?”

“Is it your pet?” Ismail asked. 

Aziraphale opened his mouth, closed it again, and smiled awkwardly. ”In a sense,” he said. It was odd to think about the implications of  _ that _ . 

The snake’s tongue flickered out for a moment. It was hard to read Crowley’s expressions in this state, but if the angel had to guess, the serpent was... amused. 

Ismail wasn’t convinced. “Can you control him, then? Like the musicians and their cobras?”

“Control him?” He spared the snake another knowing look. The chain that used to link their wrists now dangled from his hand to the space just behind the snake’s head. It was an empty threat - even as a collar, it did nothing. Merely a pretty piece of jewelry. Controlling this particular demon seemed laughable. But then, Ismail didn’t need to know the details. “I won’t let him eat you, if that’s what you’re worried about,” Aziraphale assured the boy with a small smile, and he relaxed visibly. 

Crowley and his handler were about to follow suit, but just then another three boys and a girl rounded the corner. All at once, they were surrounded by a gaggle of children who were jumping about and gasping with horrified fascination only human offspring are capable of. Ismail took his chance at the spotlight for having discovered them first – clearly he had been waiting for just such an occasion. 

“Don’t worry!” he announced grandly, as if he were the ringmaster of a circus show. “This is Master Fell’s pet serpent! It doesn’t eat humans! It’s tame!”

This seemed to disappoint the group, but they were quickly revived with an outpouring of questions, all directed at him at the same time without any regard for actually getting a clear answer. 

“How big is it?”

“Where did you get it?”

“Can it eat my goat?”

“Is it venomous?”

Aziraphale’s fingers began to stroke the black scales in a habitual attempt to soothe, but Crowley didn’t seem to need it. He was still laying his head flat on the angel’s shoulder, rather content with the situation.

“Can I hold it?” asked the girl suddenly. 

Aziraphale regarded her with some surprise. “Hold?” he repeated, and looked down at the loops of snake belly resting in the crooks of his elbows. “My dear, he’s quite heavy. And aren’t you scared?”

“Well, you said it won’t eat us,” she protested. 

Aziraphale pursed his lips. Perhaps he had gotten ahead of himself with his reassurances of Crowley’s better traits. That was rather reflective of how things usually were. He really needed to do a better job remembering that he was, after all, holding The Serpent of Eden. 

The Serpent of Eden who was, at this moment, poking its soft snout gently into Aziraphale’s chin. The angel pulled back some to meet Crowley’s eyes again, and watch his tongue flicker out. 

_ You shouldn’t trust a demon _ , something reminded him in the back of his head.  _ What if he does take a nibble? _

And then, immediately, from a hidden crevice in Aziraphale’s heart that always felt too raw, something much louder shot back with a startled defiance:

_ No, he wouldn’t! _

Crowley liked children, he knew this. He’d always known it. Aziraphale had seen him play with them before, in Egypt in Jerusalem, in Rome... Over the course of the centuries, the angel’s fearful wait for the pin to drop (or rather, for the serpent to snap) turned first into merely suspicious observations, and in turn, into a lazy fondness for watching the demon hoist little ones into the air and amuse them with his wild, imaginative games. 

In Mesopotamia, it was with heartache as he’d watched Crowley grabbing armfulls of children – sheltering them from the torrential, unforgiving rain as the floodwaters reached past his hips and Noah’s arc became merely a spec in the distance. He had seen Crowley’s gold snake eyes burning with rage – rage that Aziraphale had, in a moment of weakness, allowed himself to agree with. 

He swallowed a lump in his throat, and something inside him softened. 

“You can hold him,” he said to the girl, reaching up to unwind the snake from his shoulders. “But let me support him as well, or you’ll topple right over. Stand still now.”

And – bless Crowley – he knew what to do. He knew how to slide, slowly, peacefully, just a bit over the child’s thin neck, and onto her arms, and drape himself there without making it too difficult. Aziraphale could see the way she vibrated with unbound joy and excitement, fueled by the admiration of her peers. And, in turn, he could see how much Crowley was enjoying the attention. 

Before long the other children reached forward one after another, forming a small circle, and carefully, Crowley made his way around to them all, coiling just enough to hold on but not frighten. Aziraphale kept his hand under the main section of his belly, but it was only to support – not because he was worried the demon would do something. 

“Don’t pull,” he reminded, when one of the boys yanked on the serpent’s tail. “It pays to be kind to things, you know. They will treat you kindly in return.”

“Even snakes?” the boy asked pensively, looking back up at Aziraphale.

The angel smiled back at him. “Why not?”

“I thought snakes were evil,” Ismail admitted. “Well, just like in the book says. Toads, and locusts, and snakes and all that. They’re unpleasant, tainted. Devil’s creatures, aren’t they?”

“All of God’s creations are equal,” Aziraphale said, once again surprised by the swell of protective emotion in his chest. “Everything has its place in this world, frogs and locusts and snakes included.”

“But they hurt people,” protested the boy. 

“So do lions, yet we consider them noble,” Aziraphale reminded him. “Even humans hurt one another. Animals cannot help being what they are any more than you can help being yourself,” he said, and, without thinking, held out his hand next to Crowley’s triangular head. The serpent began to loop around his right arm again, climbing back up towards his shoulders. “Things with teeth bite,” continued Aziraphale. “It’s what they are made to do. We cannot condemn them for it.”

“So if your snake were to bite you, you wouldn’t mind?” Ismail said doubtfully. “Because he’s a snake?”

This did give Aziraphale pause. He leaned back when Crowley’s mass resettled itself on his shoulders, fingers curled loosely against the cool scales. The demon was currently winding around his left arm, and he lifted it to his face just as the other’s black snout surfaced over the horizon of his wrist. 

Their eyes met. Aziraphale stared back, the question giving him the runaround in his mind. 

“He will probably bite me eventually,” he admitted, his own words feeling heavy with regret. “But I couldn’t blame him. After all, it’s in his nature to do what he does.”

Crowley stilled. For some reason, this worried Aziraphale. He tried to convince himself that the reason for his worry was fear for his own safety – Crowley could still do a good job strangling him after all, if he so wished. Or biting, as he himself had said moments ago. 

And yet, despite his own convictions, that wasn’t even what concerned him. 

Instead he had a nagging suspicion that the snake looked looked somewhat... offended. As offended as it could look, anyway, without any complex facial muscles.

“We both do what we must, don’t we, my dear?” he said much more softly, and lifted his fingers to brush them against the underside of the red jaw. 

Crowley considered him for a moment, and finally his tongue flickered again. This time, the expression seemed cold. Aziraphale felt discomforted by this, and suddenly he wished very much that he could hear the other’s voice again, even if it would turn out to be senseless banter or another pointless argument about ineffability. 

“I’m sorry, children, but I’m afraid I must be on my way,” he announced. In reply to the immediate groans of protest he offered them his kindest smile as a parting gift. “You stay out of trouble now. We’ll both be keeping an eye on you.” 

“Be careful with the snake,” Ismail called after him.

The angel didn’t pause his step as he walked away, didn’t bother to turn around for another glance over his shoulder. 

But he had to concede - that was probably very sensible advice. 

***

“Alright, no one’s looking - go on then.” 

The back corridor was quite cramped, and Aziraphale hoped they could go back into the spacious hall of the inn soon. Stuck between stacks of rugs on one side and buckets of spices on another, he felt like he finally understood what it was like to be a book confined to a shelf. Despite all this, and the sweat cooling on his brow from smuggling a rather large snake onto the premises, his companion was taking his precious time slithering down to the ground.

“Crowley, for Heaven’s sake, hurry,” he urged, feeling the remaining coils around his ankle moving about at a glacial pace. “I told you, we have to be quick. Will you just-- Oh!”

_ Finally _ , he thought at first, and then immediately regretted it.

Said: “Right. Thank you.” 

Said: “Those clothes aren’t appropriate attire for this establishment.”

Said, as an afterthought: “Also, you’re pressing me into the wall a bit, if you don’t mind.”

“I don’t mind,” Crowley replied. The serpent had been replaced with his usual lithe shape - but far less dressed than before. 

In fact, in this day and age and location, the scant amount of fabric pulled against the other’s skin could be considered worse than nakedness, because at least nakedness was the innocent result of some unfortunate fate. The sort of display Crowley was pulling off (rather successfully, but then, that was what demons were good at, after all) was only the result of a direct amount of effort and purposeful attempt to stir up trouble. The red hair had been let loose as well, and it now rolled forward like a lion’s mane, threatening to brush dozens of long curls against Aziraphale’s nose. 

Crowley smelled just a little bit like brimstone, and there was something else there. Something earthly, familiar. Cinnamon? Aziraphale licked his lips unthinkingly and then realized what he was doing and immediately decided to pretend he had done it for the purpose of speaking.

“If you go out there like this, they’ll be very upset with the both of us. Especially in that shape,” the angel insisted, glancing up into the other’s eyes, hoping it would be less intimate than looking at the exposed skin. It wasn't. Oh bother. 

"Looking like what?" Crowley challenged. "I'm a demon, it's what I do. I can't help being myself, can I?"

Aziraphale gave him an odd look. The other's tone suggested that Crowley was saying something completely different than the words coming out of his mouth, but it was anyone's guess what that could be. Either way, there would be time to dwell on that later, when they weren't stuck in between a meter of hallway space, chest to chest. 

"And you didn't have a problem with it yesterday," Crowley added haughtily.

Aziraphale pursed his lips. "Yesterday, our only audience was Nanael, and he's completely unaware of human customs and their obsession with gender appropriate clothing. And gender in general. He can’t even tell the human men and women apart most of the time." He tried to re-establish himself by adjusting his own robe, but his knuckles brushed against Crowley’s bare stomach in the process, and the effect was the complete opposite of what he had hoped to achieve. “Besides,” he added in a way that was very calm and collected and not disturbed by their proximity at all, “we’re supposed to be laying low.”

There was another beat of silence, and then Crowley leaned back. By the time Aziraphale had finished catching his breath and immediately releasing it with relief, the demon was already clad in a more conservative garb, matched with a dark scarf draped across the sea of red curls. “Better?” The voice was biting. 

“Yes,” Aziraphale allowed, deciding to ignore the strange chill of unfriendly energy for the time being. He slipped to the side to peek around the spice bowls and, when he’d made sure the coast was clear, stepped back out. 

And nearly tripped when his wrist was yanked back by something that had stubbornly  _ not moved _ . His head spun back around - to Crowley, who was leaning against the corner, his own arm up and clenched into a fist. The delicate-looking gold chain was biting into the meat of his palm. 

“What now?” Aziraphale hissed impatiently, but he stepped back in to lessen the tension on his lead. 

“What, am I supposed to make this easy?” The demon’s voice was just as scalding as before, his jaw clenched tight with some sort of restraint.

“What has gotten into you?” the angel demanded, closing the distance between them again. Crowley was never this uncooperative - which was an odd thing to say of a demon, but it was true enough. They had been getting along fine even with the children grabbing at him. “You agreed to go out! What’s going on, Crowley?”

The demon didn’t reply at first, only pulled the dark headscarf tighter. “Nothing,” he said, in the tone of someone who clearly had more than something on their mind. “I’m not supposed to be agreeable, I’m a demon, remember?”

“I remember you being excited to try the local cured meats and liquors,” Aziraphale shot back impatiently. “Honestly, if you didn’t want to go with me, you should have just said so.”

Crowley was silent, staring-no, glaring-at the wall. 

Aziraphale worried his bottom lip, stuck between frustration bordering on anger and, at the same time, his typical worry. This wasn’t how he’d imagined this evening. If anything, he was almost looking forward to going out, to sneaking around behind Nanael’s back and finally getting a chance to sit down at a nice establishment and talking his heart out to a familiar face. Crowley always listened, always tried interesting foods with him, always allowed him to relax in a way he never could around anyone else. And why would it be any different? They were the only two beings on earth who came close to understanding each other, as two supernatural entities would after watching 5000 years of history slip by. 

As different as they were, Aziraphale wasn’t stupid enough to not value the other’s presence. Nevermind that they were enemies - sometimes, enemies talked. In fact, it was good to know your enemy, as the humans said. 

And he knew Crowley well. 

Without realizing it, the angel had begun to wring his fingers in front of his sash worriedly. 

“Was it because I let the children hold you?” he asked. The previously mentioned frustration and anger had left his voice and the anxiety swelled to fill up the leftover space. “I apologize if it was that. You didn’t seem against it, and I figured there would be no harm to--” He looked down. “Well, I suppose it must have been odd for you. It’s not that I don’t respect that form of yours! It’s quite lovely! And since Ismail - the boy - began to talk of killing things, I just wanted to show them a bit of kindness, you see. Encourage them to look at things from a different perspective, consider the feelings of things they have natural prejudice towards. I understand it must not be dignified for you, to be used as a vehicle for my good-doing-”

“Bah!” Crowley spat, startling him out of his rambling. “No, it’s not that!”

“Oh.” Aziraphale’s hands stilled. “Then what...?”

The snake, now that it had shoulders, immediately elected to pull his head down into them as if it wished it were a turtle. “Ngh,” it grumbled. “Nevermind.”

They were getting closer to the truth, Aziraphale thought, but Crowley could be rather uncooperative about these things. Still, if the evening could be salvaged, it had to be soon.

“You’ll tell me after we eat,” he decided for the both of them.

“No I won’t,” Crowley grumbled. “You’re not the boss of me.”

“I think you’ll rather find that I  _ am _ , at least for now,” the angel replied and reached out. His fingers unfurled over the chain first, and then, at the last moment, he reconsidered and cupped Crowley’s elbow instead. 

The immediate response was a flinch, and the demon looking down incredulously. It was an overreaction, by Aziraphale’s count. It wasn’t as if touching each other burned. And Crowley had grabbed or groped him on plenty of occasions - and Aziraphale had only ever been minorly annoyed, as one would normally be when one’s archenemy is tugging them off of a horse by their ankle going ‘ _ Angeeeel, spare a coin for some mead? I’m thirstyyy. _ ’ 

And now when the tables were turned and  _ he _ was the one initiating contact, the demon was acting like the ground had split open and the Apocalypse was upon them. Only seconds ago Crowley’s mouth was about to part to argue the previously stated point, but with the unexpected turnout of events, it seemed every reply he thought up had become null and void. 

A welcome side-effect, by all counts, but the  _ drama! _

“Something wrong?” the angel asked lightly. He said more than that, but it was not with his mouth but his eyebrows, which had levitated gracefully upwards as he measured Crowley with a very specific  _ look _ . His fingers tightened for a moment at the elbow, and then curled, neatly, into the crook of Crowley’s arm, anchoring him in place.

The demon made a valiant attempt at twisting his lips into a scowl, but it was lopsided. He looked more like a cat that had just attempted to sniff a lemon more so than a demon looking to intimidate. Since he had lost his ability to protest, his ability to make decisions for the both of them was similarly going out the window. 

“N...o,” he muttered, looking away. 

“Good.” Aziraphale reinstated his angelic smile and turned on his heel. He did not turn to check, but judging by the arrhythmic shuffling at his side, Crowley was following his lead this time. 

Truth be told, the angel was a bit surprised that it had worked. All he’d done was push a little bit - the same way Crowley usually pushed him. Grabbing him, sneaking up on him, getting close enough to make Aziraphale just a bit uncomfortable in order to get what he wanted. But that was Crowley - he was meant to be overbearing and stubborn and a little bit annoying. Nothing to be done about that - once a demon always a demon. And yet, the concept that he could potentially turn on the bully and deploy the same techniques on Crowley himself, not to mention with results as good as these, was a bit inspiring. Perhaps that would be something he would have to keep in mind for later. 

Together they crossed behind the pillars to the entryway and headed for the long table at the front. Crowley didn’t seem particularly interested in the conversation Aziraphale had with the innkeeper. Some brief greetings were exchanged - they knew him there, and welcomed him back with open arms. Aziraphale made small talk, and then inquired about the dinner for the night. Not an unusual thing for him - he came around often, but the man kept throwing Crowley curious glances as well.

Eventually the demon seemed to feel it would not be prudent to keep ignoring him. He bared his teeth, apparently ready to give his best devilish smile and at that exact moment, Aziraphale, fully aware of his intentions, tightened his grip on Crowley’s arm just a bit.

The serpent stilled again, looking down at him incredulously. Aziraphale could feel the gaze on him, but he resisted the incredibly tempting urge to meet the demon’s eyes. 

Heaven: 2. Hell: 0.

(Actually, if he was only counting the score between himself and his adversary on accounts of Getting On The Other’s Nerves, the numbers were far more likely to be in Crowley’s favor, but Aziraphale decided to keep track only from this evening forward. It just seemed more fair that way.)

Satisfied with his newfound power and satisfied that Crowley knew that he knew how to use it, he finally let go of the other and leaned across the desk to the inn-keeper. 

“And Saladin, my friend, I have a favor,” he said quietly. “This is somewhat of a discrete business meeting. If you don’t mind, I’d like a private room for me and my... companion.”

The inn-keeper offered a gracious and understanding smile. Meanwhile, beside Aziraphale, the snake was making a series of odd attempts at vocalizing half-words of shock. 

It seemed that he was dissatisfied with something, but he at least had the sense to keep his face blank until they had both walked away towards the stairs and well out of earshot. Then the demon’s patience finally snapped and, forgetting the fact that they had been quarreling only minutes ago, he leaned over Aziraphale’s shoulder. 

“And here I thought Nanael was the one bad with genders,” Crowley muttered. “You do know what I look like, don’t you?”

The angel spared him a glance, though it didn’t carry the shock or concern the other had probably hoped to inspire. Instead he simply said, as if only now observing it; “Oh, yes, you’re quite feminine today, aren’t you? And what of it?”

“What of it?” Crowley sputtered, but he--no, it was  _ she _ for the moment, Aziraphale corrected himself absentmindedly, not breaking step. “What of-- Aziraphale, I know you don’t keep up with human cultures as much, but for all the reading you do, you  _ must _ be more self aware! A fine scholar like yourself, unmarried, talking to a woman? That nice gentlemen now thinks you’ve got a prostitute of some sort that you’re about to take for a spin in one of his private dining rooms!”

Despite the demon’s best efforts to inspire moral conflict, Aziraphale was calm. He paused at the corner and gave Crowley another look - the specific length that Crowley was, in human form. (Eventually it would come to be known as The Once Over.) “You look more like a widow than a prostitute, my dear. With those clothes - and especially with that gloomy expression you’ve got on,” he observed.

“I tried to wear less, if you recall,” Crowley muttered.

Aziraphale shook his head instead of answering directly. “Saladin knows I’m not the type to lure innocent women into ungodly deeds. I’ve helped out his sister when she had a difficult birth. He trusts me.”

“Is his sister a prostitute?” Crowley inquired. “Is that why he’s fine with it? What, are you running some sort of shelter for out-of-luck women around here as well?”

The angel ignored the jab with practiced familiarity. It wasn’t a particularly horrid thing to accuse someone of. More of a complement, really. “My dear, if you’re worried about appearances, I’ll assure you, you don’t look like the type,” the angel pointed out dryly. “You look like you’d stab me sooner than kiss me.” Then he reached out and pulled back the woven tapestry shielding the entrance to their assigned room. “After you, my lady.”

“Why not both?” Crowley muttered, but stepped inside anyway. 

They settled down on the cushions at the table, stretching out their feet. Because of the chain connecting them it was impossible to sit on opposite sides, so instead they ended up awkwardly next to each other, approximately 4 feet apart, stretching the gold shackle between them to as much distance as it would allow. 

A few minutes later the breads Aziraphale ordered were brought over, along with bowls of plov and roasted lamb. The wine followed shortly after and the angel quickly busied himself with distributing both things to the two of them. Soon the entire space was permeated with the familiar heat of recently cooked meat and the smells of generously rubbed spices. In this small room, filled with simply human sensations, the two slowly began to unwind again. There was no way not to; a response that would eventually come to be known as Pavlovian forced both angel and demon to automatically relax and let go in the presence of the scent of food, the taste of alcohol and, most importantly, each other. Not that either would ever admit it. 

“So,” said Crowley after the fourth cup of wine had eased the demon’s tense posture into a far more natural and noodly placement among the cushions. “How is it that an angel of God such as yourself knows what a prostitute is supposed to look like?”

Aziraphale tore himself away from his bowl of plov and wiped some rice off of the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand. He didn’t deem it necessary to look at his companion, instead reaching across the table for the breads. “Why wouldn’t I?” he said, unconcerned.

“It’s not exactly your area of expertise,” Crowley drawled. “You being - as I mentioned - an angel and all. Or is it one of those clever little lines your lot has come up with - something like ‘love the sinner, hate the sin’? Because that’s a load of horseshit no matter what angle you sniff it from, and I think you’re clever enough to know that.”

Aziraphale refused to take the bait. He chewed on the bread thoughtfully and then turned his head just a bit to measure the other with a thoughtful look. “I’ll tell you if you tell me what had you so upset back there.”

“See?” Crowley said, for some reason invigorated. “That’s what I mean! Bargaining now! How come that’s all perfectly fine? So much for ‘nature’!”

“What  _ are _ you on about?” the angel asked, more intrigued than frustrated at this point. 

The demon pulled herself up into a mocking caricature of what was probably supposed to be Aziraphale, hands settled serenely over the stomach. “ _ It’s in his nature to do what he does _ ,” she intoned in a pitch that was significantly higher than Aziraphale’s natural tone. “ _ He’ll probably bite me eventually, but I wouldn’t blame him for that! _ ”

There was a brief second pause, and in that second, Aziraphale had to fight the urge to say ‘I don’t sound like that’ and then remind himself to focus on what was really important. “Is that what you’re upset about? Because I said you do dastardly things because you’re a demon?”

“No!” Crowley snapped impatiently. “No, that’s not what I’m upset about! Of  _ course _ I do dastardly things - of course I’m a demon! Fully aware of that, thank you! That’s all good and fine - or, bad, I mean. But the--you-- You said I can’t help it!” Crowley blurted out emphatically. 

The angel set the bread down, but he was still chewing. “...and?” he said expectantly. 

More confounded sputtering ensued. It was a series of incredibly unique and frustrated sounds that resembled the Dial-Up tone, which had not yet been invented. “And?!” Crowley finally managed to spit. “And...? You think I can’t help it! You think all of this-” The demon motioned vaguely to the tangle of limbs at her disposal. “-is out of some animalistic, unhinged instinct? Like it’s something I have no control over?! Like I have no free will?”

Oh, how that glower suited her, thought Aziraphale despite himself. Those burning yellow eyes, shining behind a waterfall of copper curls. Unlike the languid smile and teasing plays, this was more the real Crowley - that unbridled anger the demon only let loose when it  _ really mattered _ . Wrath was one of those sins Aziraphale never worried about for himself, but on Crowley it looked positively stunning. In times when the angel himself could not be angry, it always made him feel better when Crowley was angry enough for the both of them. 

The arc. The crucifixion. Countless others besides. 

This time, however, he wasn’t sure the reaction was quite justified. 

Aziraphale set down his unfinished bread. An unheard-of phenomenon that was an indicator of how heavy this conversation was getting. “That’s not what I meant,” he said, voice gentler than he expected it to be. Some guilt was still eating away at him, apparently. “But Crowley, you know it’s true. Humans have free will. We do not. We must follow The Plan, after all. It’s Her Divine will.”

Crowley scowled stubbornly. ”Then what are you doing right now? Eating and drinking with me? How does The Plan fit into all this? Hm?”

Aziraphale looked away again. “Crowley, please,” he implored softly. “I don’t know. Perhaps it doesn’t, directly. But the plan--it’s ineffable. I don’t question it. And I don’t question my instinct to do what is good. And I know you must do bad things. That’s what we are.”

“So what, then,” demanded Crowley, in a voice that seemed to be cracking at the edges. “So what, you just tolerate me because you think I can’t help myself? You take pity on me, because you know I’m like a dumb animal, like a moth meant to fly at the ssssun and can’t help going into the fire? Can’t help tempting people, that Crowley. Can’t do anything about it, so it’s not bad, not really. ‘Sss got no choice about it, too incapable of doing anything else!” A second wave of fury was threatening to hit the metaphorical shoreline of their conversation, if Crowley’s sibilant rant was anything to go by. “And you - you’re an angel, and you just can’t help yourself, can you? Can’t help but be good and kind to everything, so I get sssswept up in that little instinct of yours, do I? It’s not something you  _ want _ to do, it’s just something you  _ must _ do? Because it’s in your  _ nature _ ? Gotta tick off that box of being nice to thingsss, and I happen to be clossssse by, is that it?”

Aziraphale looked startled. “Why, no!” he protested, wide eyes shadowed by the deep furrow of his brows. “That’s not it at all!”

“Then why?” the demon demanded. “Why are you nicccce to me? If it’s in your nature to smite demons, why not do it? Why haven’t you, already? Yesterday? In Greece? Back in Eden, even?”

Aziraphale remained silent, jaw clenched tight like a dam barring a flood replies he was not (yet) willing to let go of.

“The thing about being good or bad,” Crowley rumbled, a noise from deep in the throat, now much more like a true animal, “is that if you don’t have a choice about which one you are, it doesn’t really count, does it?”

Aziraphale stared desperately, both lost and wishing that he understood less than he did. This was a dangerous road to go down. They were closer now, barely a meter apart, and he could see a great deal more detail in the other’s face than usual. It was distracting at best, and heart-wrenching at most.

The serpent’s eyes were yellow - the color bleeding without restraint to even the parts that used to be white, blotting out the last bit of humanity. “The thing about free will, angel,” Crowley hissed, “Is that the lack of choice makes any action you take quite... unpunishable. Wouldn’t you say?” 

“By which you mean...?” the angel said quietly. He knew where this was going, and yet he couldn’t seem to stop himself. 

“If something can’t help doing what it does, if it has no choice but to do it, would you still punish it for performing the one action it’s limited to?”

The silence cracked in the air like static, charged by one very tense demon.

“I suppose not,” Aziraphale conceded hesitantly. “Of course, you can’t punish something for an action it didn’t have a choice in. That would be cruel.”

“So then, for example... if I went back today and found those ickle little children we met, and swallowed them right up... could you really blame me?”

The angel didn’t flinch, but there was a brief flash of pain in his eyes. “You wouldn’t,” he said softly.

Crowley’s tongue flickered out. It was longer than usual. “According to you, I would, because I am a demon. I can’t help it.”

“But you haven’t. Historically speaking. You haven’t been as awful as you could have been,” the angel protested. “You’ve done things that - that have been.... not evil.”

One delicate eyebrow arched up, and Crowley’s expression seemed to say  _ Now we’re getting somewhere.  _ “Ergo?”

Aziraphale bit his lip. “Crowley,” he said, still just as softly as if he were putting a slumbering baby to bed and didn’t want to wake it. He certainly felt as if he had already woken something much more terrible than a baby. They were on that strange precipice again, only this time, the warmth from the void down below more resembled an active volcano. “Listen, I don’t have the answers. I’m not meant to. Maybe... maybe you’re right. Maybe demons have free will. But you know angels don’t. I can’t help being what I am. Angels cannot do un-angelic things.”

Crowley’s face darkened again. “Are you sure?” 

This was too much - now instead of the burning heat of anger, the serpentine eyes were hardening into ice. The angel, so used to seeking warmth in Crowley’s Wrath, physically flinched back from the change. “Yes. You said yourself,” he tried desperately. “Back in Eden, Crowley. You told me.”

The demon stilled.

“You... you said -  _ you’re an angel. I don’t think you  _ can _ do the wrong thing. _ ” Aziraphale smiled weakly, hoping against all hope that the other would remember - would go back to being the easygoing self he had been back on the wall. 

Instead, Crowley scowled and looked down. Something heavy and dark seemed to be descending over the demon’s angular shoulders. It was as if the two wings, usually kept seamlessly hidden just beyond the dimension visible to humans, had suddenly sagged in exhaustion.

“Angel,” Crowley said, voice much softer than Aziraphale expected to hear. “That was a lie.”

It was probably meant to hurt, that sentence. Instead, Aziraphale could only see the pain reflected in the other’s eyes. He felt his stomach flip with a cocktail of the entire range of human emotions, and a few angelic ones, though none of them were pleasant. 

Crowley’s face was stretched with a hollow smile. “You really think angels don’t have free will? That they can do no wrong? That God wouldn’t punish one for expressing the desire to have a choice that doesn’t fit with Her predestined Ideals? She would, angel. She would.”

Aziraphale swallowed, but there seemed to be something stuck in his throat. 

“I should know,” Crowley said. “I learned the hard way.”

The demon leaned back, the space between them opening up again like a half-healed wound. The anger - both hot and cold - receded. Aziraphale looked on silently as the figure before him unfurled its midnight-colored wings and then exploded into a cloud of iridescent smoke that, for just a split second, looked like a nebula. It enveloped the room, pressing tightly against Aziraphale’s true form on every plane, right before blinking out of existence and taking Crowley with it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In case this is confusing - and I know it must be, because I'm fully aware of the inconsistencies - Crowley HAS been switching back and forth between female/male shapes. (He was feminine-presenting in the first chapter, but none of the entities present care about that, so none of them bothered with switching pronouns.)
> 
> In the second half of this chapter Crowley takes a decidedly feminine appearance which matters more to them when humans are involved, so Aziraphale switches his speech for the sake of keeping up appearances. But usually if it's only the two of them, Aziraphale tends to call Crowley 'he' simply out of habit regardless of what shape he takes.


	4. Bound

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This one's got FLASHBACK SCENES, KIDS! Are you excited to be reading YET ANOTHER reiteration of "Crowley grabs children and shoves them into Noah's Ark with the energy of the Breadsticks Date At Olive Garden meme"?

It was time for introspection, thought Crowley. 

A gritty activity liked by no one, regardless of their status. Angels typically didn’t have the ability to engage in it, of course, so it was a practice that had primarily lent itself to the recently Fallen. It was a sort of tradition with demons, a self-imposed hazing ritual you suddenly had an aptitude for once you crawled out of the lake of boiling sulphur and had finished coughing up your ethereal guts on the lava rock and screaming about one thing or another. 

It created a nice introductory Torture 101 Lesson: physical and mental. After you were done hurting on the outside, you got to hurt on the  _ inside _ . And wasn’t that nice? Symmetry. A lovely mockup of all the things you lost once your metaphorical umbilical cord with Heaven and the Divine had been ripped out of your very core. 

Humans, of course, had taken this practice and perfected it. Curse them - they always had to one-up Hell in some way or another. Immediately after the invention of Introspection as an extreme sport (or self-harm, depending on how you looked at it, but then again, in Hell the lines on those two things were not so much blurred as resembled a Möbius strip) the humans had taken the controls on that and cranked all the dials up to 11 and went on to very quickly think up such horrifying things as Anxiety and Self-Doubt, and then, on a level above that, Imposter Syndrome and the like. At this point in history the invention of specific sufferings brought about by Introspection had not slowed down at all, and in fact the forecast promised a spike of inspiration for even more variants somewhere in the early 21st century.

For the time being, though, Crowley decided to forgo these exciting, more complicated tortures, and settled on the classic version, with a bit of self-hatred sprinkled in (but really, that was just for flavor.) 

So, without further ado...

He was an idiot. 

Not only - oh, no, he couldn’t stop there. 

He was emotional, he was insensitive, he was selfish. He had spoken out of anger instead of thinking about the words that had poured out of his mouth like a dam wall cracking open after straining under the pressure of 5000 years of wry, mischievous smiles. 

He had misjudged - himself. 

And he had probably made Aziraphale hate him, once and for all. 

Excellent work, all in all, for a demon. In terms of spreading misery and doubt - and blasphemy, couldn’t forget that - he had done overtime. He could probably clock out now, crawl under a rock, and Hell wouldn’t even be able to bother him for the next 50 years  _ at least _ .

Except that there was also the issue of  _ why _ he would want to crawl under a rock in the first place, after such an accomplishment. 

He could see the annual Hell periodicals now, pinned to the wall in the Head Office. Front and center:  _ Great Serpent of Eden _ ,  _ tied into a knot because he insulted an angel... and immediately fled the scene of the crime to avoid having to face what he’d done _ . 

Pathetic. 

With an anguished cry that he tried to disguise as a snarl of fury and failed, Crowley jumped to his feet and began to walk along the edge of the crumbling wall he had been sitting on throughout his Introspection. This particular wall was very old. Some of the ancient rock tried to give under his feet but then immediately changed its mind, since Crowley needed it to stay together, at least for the next few hours of his nervous pacing.

It was night now, true night, not like the kind one might find in the city with all those lit street torches. He had gotten far enough away for that, brought himself to the edge of the desert where the dunes in the distance bled into a brilliant explosion of stars. The milky way, lighting up the void of space, arched over the earth in a scattering of distant galaxies. 

Crowley craned his neck, eyes flitting over this display. He searched for the ones he had made and his gaze lingered on them longer. They burned bright. He allowed himself to feel a sliver of pride, to set off the bouquet of self-loathing. 

Sometimes, he wondered why it had been THIS world. It didn’t have to be. There were others. They, too, had been beautiful in their own special way. They had sunsets, they had landscapes, they had seasons... They were all unique. 

So why here? Why the Earth, specifically? Why had She--

No, that was pointless. He had already been down that road too many times, and it never helped to brighten his mood to Question things he already knew he would never get answers to. As a past-time it was fine, and it fit his hobbies as a demon, but that was the last thing he wanted to be now. 

Not that he wanted to be an angel, either, but he wanted...

He wanted... 

His lips thinned at the sudden realization.

That was the trouble.

He  _ wanted _ . And what he wanted was, coincidentally, something that was the exact source of his agony. 

Aziraphale. The angel. The Principality. The storyteller. The voice of reason. The kindness. 

Another grunt rose up in his throat, but this one was tired. He already knew he was not helping things. He knew thinking of Aziraphale only brought about more of those same Feelings he was so keen on squashing. He was aware of this effect the angel had on him, and yet, time after time, he indulged. Natural as it was for a demon to indulge, the resulting, lingering tenderness somewhere under his rib was anything but. 

And yet, and yet, and yet... right now, he wanted that. It would be a nice replacement for the hollow ache he had recently acquired.

Crowley brought his hand up to his chest, gripped the fabric there, and closed his eyes. 

***

It was in Mesopotamia that it first happened. The great flood, specifically. Or, even more specifically, about a day or two after it had started. 

By this time, the intertwining braids of roads the humans trampled into the earth had all disappeared into the muck of the downpour. The water had risen over the gaping windows of clay houses until it eventually swallowed them whole, hiding their empty shells on a newly formed seabed. Currently, this new sea was busy lapping its angry waves at the tops of the highland trees. 

About 60 feet above what used to be a city, a boat was weathering the neverending storm - though not due to any feat of engineering. Noah had never had a knack for this type of work. Like all other abrupt and highly questionable decisions made by the Almighty, this one was getting by mostly on Divine intervention instead of common sense. 

Or at least, that was Crowley’s very blasphemous opinion. But he was allowed to have it. He was a demon. And what was more - he was a demon in a  _ bad mood _ .

He was wet. Wet, and miserable. He was also nauseous from the continuous rocking (did snakes even get seasick?), and his clothes hung heavy on him, and everything was bad. Not the good kind of bad, either. Just plain bad.

And everything was about to get worse, or so he thought, when the wooden panel on the wall he was hiding behind groaned open under the pressure of an insistent pair of arms wrenching it aside. 

Despite the weight and the exhaustion settling into his gut like the liter of sea water he’d consumed in place of dinner, Crowley sprung to his feet and skidded his ankles apart to throw out a ward that should have, under all circumstances, stopped anyone from coming further in.

Assuming they were human, of course, but, as was his luck, this wasn’t the case.

“You must be out of your mind,” a voice hissed in response and there was a sudden explosion of light to break the half-hearted ward clean in half. Crowley leaned back and squinted unhappily as the intruder, unbothered by the demon’s attempt to keep this a private quarters, wedged himself into the crevice. “Crawley, is that  _ you  _ in here?”

Crowley hissed in lieu of a greeting, and took a menacing step forward. “What do you want, Aziraphale?”

“For starters, I wanted to know why Noah’s arc had a sudden hidden compartment that stank of hellish magic,” the invading angel replied tensely. “But I suppose I have my answer to that question.”

“I suppose you have,” Crowley muttered. He was not in the mood for a chat right at that moment. Usually the angel was the least of his problems, but standing his ground seemed like the right thing to do, so he did. 

“If you’re planning to ruin things for Noah, you’ve got another thing coming,” Aziraphale announced in a poor attempt at a threat. “I’m not letting you get away with anything.”

“A pity,” the demon quipped dryly. “All my plans of taste-testing this zoo species by species, foiled. Whatever shall I do.”

“Don’t you dare eat a single thing!” Aziraphale gasped. “These animals are meant to survive and bear progeny to continue the Animal Kingdom!”

“A rather small gene pool, but ah, that’s the tradition anyway, isn’t it?” 

The angel merely glared, though it was a bit ineffective since he couldn’t see Crowley too well. The space between the walls which should not have existed was rather dark, and Aziraphale’s soft ethereal glow was not enough to light up much more than a few inches in front of him. He did not attempt to leave.

“There’s still that one single unicorn, I suppose. He’ll be better off put out of his misery before he realizes there’s naught to shag,” Crowley said, sensing the beginning of an awkward stand-off from a mile away. That had to be avoided at all costs. “I’d do the lonely bastard a favor myself, but something tells me the humans might get their teeth into it before I do.”

Aziraphale didn’t take the bait. He kept looking at Crowley suspiciously. 

“You should go check on the unicorn,” Crowley reiterated. How much more obvious did he have to be? “Before they eat it.”

Still not getting the hint, the angel stepped a bit closer - not something Crowley expected to happen. The blue eyes, now barely an arm’s reach from his face, were piercing and a bit difficult to look at. They burned with Grace and Divinity and all the other things that usually elicited a proper allergic reaction in demons. “Why do you want me out of here so quickly?” Aziraphale asked. 

_ Oh, so he’s not a complete idiot _ , thought Crowley. His face, unbenounced to him, was morphing into something resembling mild appreciation. He caught the expression quickly and banished it. It had no place in his repertoire, especially not when angels were involved. 

“I have no idea what you mean,” he replied, hooking up his sarcasm and firing it up full blast. “Me, a demon, wanting you, an angel, to leave me alone? Whyever should I desire anything like that?” Crowley cranked his head to the side and smiled in the worst way possible, lips grimacing open his upper row of teeth. “On the contrary, stay here! Join me in my little hole, let’s get cosy, shall we?” 

That did it. Aziraphale pulled back, clearly discomforted. “You’ve hardly any need to stay here,” he said, now avoiding the other’s gaze at all costs. “There’s a bottom level to house all the animals, you’d fit right in with them.”

“Oho,” Crowley crooned, once again realizing a second too late that he had accidentally let himself be endeared “That’s brilliant, calling me an animal, a  _ very _ low blow. You really outdid yourself, angel. Didn’t know you had it in you.”

“You are a demon, I’m meant to insult you,” Aziraphale protested, completely missing the point of the jab. He was also, for some reason, beginning to go pink at the ears - a fascinating quality, and a fascinating color, and a fascinating thing to look at. Crowley vowed to return to this observation at a later time. “Now tell me what it is you’re planning!” the angel demanded again.

“Oh for Satan’s sake... I’m planning to eat the unicorn!” Crowley snapped testily, switching strategies yet again and deciding to go for flat out unpleasant since all of his usual attempts were beginning to sound like merely poking fun and lacked their usual demonic sting. “But right now, I’m planning to stay here and hide! So if you want to foil my plans, I suggest you  _ go away _ and keep watch over the blessed thing!”

Aziraphale bristled. “I’m not falling for your tricks!”

“It’s not a trick!”

“What else would it be?”

Crowley opened his mouth to answer, and then immediately stopped short when an unexpected hand on his thigh stopped him. 

“Wa’s wrong?” a third voice cut in. 

Aziraphale just about jumped out of his mortal vessel. As an apparent side effect, his angelic glow brightened considerably and became enough to illuminate the space down to Crowley’s knees, where a tiny girl was clinging to the edges of the demon’s robe. She rubbed her eyes and squinted up at the angel. 

“Wow,” she gasped. 

Aziraphale’s mouth was making a very similar sound. He looked - really looked - around the cavernous hole he had found himself in. It was a narrow space, but it was long. Behind Crowley, he could now see shapes - clothed lumps lined up against the wall, all curled around each other like tiny sacks of potatoes. “The children!” he exclaimed. “The ones you had with you when the rain started-- What are-- How did you-”

Before the questions could get properly voiced answers, Crowley suddenly leaned in, grabbing the angel by the front of his clothes and dragging him closer. “Shut it!” he hissed venomously. “Not another word, you hear?”

Aziraphale gaped at him. His eyes, once a brilliant cobalt blue, were now softening into a mild cerulian. Crowley did not like that look one bit. The hue was ill fitted to the way he was attempting to decorate the entire debacle. There was no Feng Shui to the warmth of it in a room which was supposed to be hung with dark, intimidating demonic acts of evil. That was to say: The angel was smart - perhaps too smart. That was a problem. 

“These children,” he hissed. “Are going to be the worst of the worst. They will bear children eventually, and their children will also do that, and in five generation’s time they will become Hell’s most reliable agents.” He threw a glance down at the girl, who was still leaning her head against his thigh, thumb in her mouth. “That one’s going to become a witch.”

“Oh,” said Aziraphale, like the demon had just told him some fascinating detail about the local fauna.

“Noah’s line will need some competition,” Crowley added. 

“Right,” agreed Aziraphale. Again, very mildly. Not at all complaining.

Crowley tightened his grip and opened his mouth to come up with more convincing arguments which no one had asked for, but at that exact moment, footsteps thundered down the poorly-nailed-together stairs just outside of his precious hiding spot. 

As if on cue, both angel and demon swerved their heads around to look at the opened panel in the wall. The voices were filtering through, coming closer. At that point, Crowley was already letting go and abandoning his plot to scare the other with haphazardly put together excuses which seemed to not be as convincing as he’d planned. He prioritized drawing his robe around the girl to get her out of the divine light, but by the time she was safely hidden in the folds of the black cloth, the glow illuminating the hiding spot had dimmed, and the only thing that remained was the gentle twinkle of blue from Aziraphale’s eyes. 

The angel stepped back towards the entrance and then cast Crowley one last glance. 

Crowley held it - daring him. Threatening. 

Aziraphale did not look particularly threatened. Instead he looked... torn.

“What’s this?” a gruff voice just outside asked. “Who’s in there?”

The blue eyes hardened. Making an abrupt decision, he turned his body sideways and slipped out, one hand remaining on the edge of the wooden panel. “It’s me,” he said lightly. In response to his appearance, the voice dulled its edge and inquired immediately if something was wrong. 

_ They knew him! _ Crowley realized. They trusted him. Of course. Leave it to the angels to travel in style on a makeshift cruise ship at the end of a humanity-ending flood while the rest of them had to hide as lowly stow-aways. The irony was entirely lost on them. 

The demon scowled and raised his hand and preparing a much stronger curse. He wasn’t about to let his efforts go to waste. He didn’t go down without a fight. 

And then the angel said: “No, no, nothing in there at all.”

Crowley froze. 

“Just an empty storage compartment,” Aziraphale assured. He paused and then went on: “I was thinking - since we will need to keep provisions in good condition, you could bring some of the crates of food down. I’m sure they’ll keep nicely.”

“Oh?” asked the human man. “That’s an excellent idea. I hear the gourds are already beginning to rot...”

And then - then, the angel stepped out of the corridor completely, and the panel shut with a soft thud behind him. 

And Crowley was left alone - with 13 sleeping children.

Safe.

***

Something remained in Crowley from that encounter. 

It wasn’t gratitude - he had no capacity for that, as a demon, surely - but it wasn’t smugness, either. He wasn’t stupid enough to think that Aziraphale had felt sufficiently scared of him to lie to Noah’s family. Instead, he was... befuddled. Confused. It was a stupid itch, an unsatisfied, half-full feeling of not understanding why Aziraphale had done what he had. Of not knowing the reasoning behind the decision. 

And he hated not knowing, hated it more than anything.

So it followed that he should hate Aziraphale. He should distrust Aziraphale, he should be suspicious of the angel of the Eastern Gate, like he should have been suspicious of him from the beginning, when he crawled up to join him on the edge of the wall the first time at the Garden.

It followed that... 

Well. 

Crowley had never been sufficiently good at following. And he wasn’t about to start now. 

So instead, he skirted the edges. Lurked. Observed. 

And waited, patiently, for an explanation.

It was in Dholavira that they met next. A marketplace, full of stands and food and drink, and people and din. A lovely place for all sorts of trouble, for all sorts of sinning, which he was itching to encourage. 

Crowley had chosen it specifically for his next job, and he had a plan in place that involved a complex, Rube-Goldberg machine level plot of adultery - but at the exact moment that he leaned across the table to begin talking to the woman holding a large fold of cured meats and a larger grudge against her next door neighbor, a movement of white caught his eye on the other side of the street. 

It was Aziraphale - standing next to a cart full of some sort of brown lumps that were probably supposed to be edible. The angel was currently talking to the seller with animated hand gestures to match, explaining something. The light caught his platinum curls, contrasting with the color of sun-kissed skin. He paused the conversation, searched himself for a leather pouch of coins which was definitely not there (until a second later, miraculously, it was) and then handed over two carved pieces of copper. 

In return, the merchant handed him a lump wrapped in a piece of thin cloth. 

Crowley watched from across the street, entranced, as the angel immediately unfurled the cloth and pushed his fingers into the crust of the thing he had recently purchased. Even from this distance, Crowley could imagine more than actually see the detail of the nails (too clean for this millenium) as they ripped the food apart. Inside, the texture seemed to be softer, almost porous. The angel brought it to his face, took a deep sniff, and smiled like God Herself had just breathed Grace into him. Then he parted his lips, exposed his teeth and, acting for all the world like a human submitting to the whims of simple animal hunger - bit down. 

By the time the demon felt his elbow slip out from under him he had already gained enough momentum ground-wards to make recovery out of the question. That is to say he promptly tripped on absolutely nothing, nearly collapsing in an undignified heap by the side of the cured meats cart. He didn’t, of course - at the last moment he whipped his hips around to maneuver his bodyweight mostly upright again in a motion that tattled of a snake-like tendency to forget what legs were used for. It would have been a sufficient save had his facial expression been a little more ‘I meant to do that’ instead of ‘my brain is currently out to lunch watching someone else eat theirs’ but the damage was done. The lady he had been attempting to seduce was now looking at him with an expression of amusement, not lust. 

He could remedy that later. Now, though, now - his priorities had shifted. 

“Aziraphale,” he called, feet moving seemingly on their own.

Aziraphale’s eyebrows seemed to be doing the same thing - reaching up for his hairline before he had even spotted Crowley cutting through the crowd. Then his mouth did a strange sort of twitch - but since he had his cheeks full of bread, it was impossible to identify what the expression was supposed to be before the angel managed to get it under control. 

“Oh, hello,” he mumbled, and hurriedly wiped some crumbs off of his chin. “What are you doing?”

“What am  _ I _ doing? What are  _ you  _ doing?” Crowley countered. “Are you... eating?”

Guilt lit the angel up from inside. Crowey could see it on another plane as a demon, but he didn’t have to look that far. The angel’s own skin didn’t do much to hide the prompt rush of blood to his cheeks. He hurriedly swallowed the piece he had just been chewing and lowered the remaining bit to his side as if he was under the impression that demons might not have object permanence. “Just making sure the baker has enough money to feed his family,” he said. “His business has been suffering lately.”

“Hm,” Crowley said, valiantly fighting a knowing smirk. Then he wondered why he should and released it into the wild, allowing it to accost the angel’s own  _ who-me? _ wide-eyed innocence. 

Aziraphale blushed again - harder this time - and averted his eyes.

_ Oh _ , thought Crowley despite himself.  _ This is fun _ .

“Taste good?” he inquired innocently. 

Aziraphale looked at him again. Crowley waited for the next step, for the extra hit of guilt he was ready to inhale like a drug, and then--

Aziraphale smiled. Really smiled - his entire face was splitting in two like a pot of clay and golden glow was spilling, gushing from between the cracks. 

“Oh, yes!” he said, and lifted the bread up to the demon’s nose. “It’s lovely, with sunflower seeds! My favorite, in fact. Would you like some?”

Crowley recoiled twice. First, from the angelic smile, then from the bread. A strange, unidentifiable event was unfolding in his lower gut, and he had a sneaking suspicion that it was in no way food related.

“You eat?” he managed to choke out, desperately steering the conversation back around to Not Good, Bad and Guilt Inducing topics. He would get good at steering eventually, but for now the mechanics eluded him. “An angel, eating?”

“Well it would be a waste otherwise, wouldn’t it?” Aziraphale defended. He lowered the bread a bit, but his smile faltered. Crowley’s stomach reacted unfavorably at the loss. “Don’t you eat?” he asked.

“Only sometimes,” Crowley admitted. Why was he saying this? He didn’t have to say this. “I prefer drinking, honestly. The alcohol is a much easier undertaking, and the aftereffects are much more fun.” He didn’t have to say that either.

“Alcohol?” Aziraphale asked and brought the bread back up to his lips, mouthing the crust idly as if he had forgotten to be properly ashamed of the practice already. “I haven’t tried that. Seemed a bit... inebriating.”

“Oh, it is,” Crowley agreed. “But that’s the good part. Also, the flavor isn’t too bad - they’ve gotten quite creative with it as of late. Lots of fruit involved these days.” 

The angel looked up at him, interest clearly piqued. “Oh?” he asked, and the clay cracked again, basking the demon in a warm glow of a new, hopeful smile. 

Without meaning to, Crowley found himself smiling back. 

_ Oh _ , he thought.  _ This is bad _ . 

***

The trend became this - Crowley would bump into Aziraphale here and there. Every century. Sometimes, every few decades. Sometimes, sooner. When the time stretched to be too much, he would go and seek the angel out on purpose. (The purpose being, of course, that he was a demon, and Aziraphale was his enemy. He had to keep an eye on his enemy.)

Every time, things would go approximately like so:

They would find each other. Accuse one another of a recently witnessed good or bad deed. A specific amount of poking fun or scolding would ensue. Never too much. Some half-hearted insults would be exchanged. Then, without quite knowing how, they would end up where the food was. Then, where the drink was. They would eat and drink. They would relax. They would start talking. 

And Crowley would... melt. 

He was no stranger to melting. Falling into a lake of boiling sulphur lent itself to many experiences, melting being one of them. Crowley was no stranger to the agony of melting, but melting under Aziraphale’s annoyingly warm gaze or brilliant smiles was a torture of an entirely new caliber. Although initially the Grace and Goodness leaking out of the angel had nearly caused him to break out in a bout of hives he was sure was the result of a natural allergy to angels, eventually he got used to it. Eventually, he began to feel comfortable. 

The tolerance of the divine wasn’t entirely bad for a demon. In fact, if he spun the Rubik's cube of excuses enough times (and if he peeled off and re-applied the stickers while no one was looking) such a result could look as if it favored him. It meant that he was, in one way or another, immune to his opposition. And that was bound to come in handy for some of his more dastardly schemes. 

And schemes - he had schemes. He was good at what he did, and he was always eager to develop more complex plots. Temptations weren’t fun if they were simple; Crowley craved a challenge. 

One of the challenges he had come up with was, unsurprisingly, the angel himself. It was a long-term project. An Angel of the Lord was not one that would be likely to fall for his wiles easily, but if any of them would, he thought it might be Aziraphale. The plump, curly-haired little thing practically oozed indulgence and vice in equal measure. From food to drink, to stories, to little human rituals - he partook in it all with the vigor of a starved animal set loose in a meat market. By all accounts, Tempting him to the other side should have been as simple as leaving a trail of sweet breads and cheeses in a long line all the way to Hell’s front door. (In fact, Crowley had considered just such an approach a few centuries earlier.)

And yet - as quickly as he had come up with this perfectly evil plan, he also realized how naive that assumption had been. 

Because attempting to Fell Aziraphale - attempting to lead him to ruin - was like punching a huge pillow. 

It might feel good at first as a form of exercise, but eventually you grew tired and realized that it was pointless and, at some point soon after that, you became aware that instead of punching the pillow you could bury your face in it and go to sleep, and that was much more comfortable and satisfying. 

This specific metaphor of realization - that Aziraphale was a pillow - came to Crowley sometime in ancient Greece when he first came across such a thing. Prior to this discovery, he had only had run-ins with the other type of human pillows - hard, uncomfortable ones made of stone that the upper-class people used when they slept. It was dreadful, like hanging your head on a metal hook for the night. Crowley had never been a big fan of sleeping for that particular reason - but this new type of pillow promised to change things. It was soft and supportive, giving just enough to allow him to rest on it comfortably without ever completely breaking under the weight of his mental turbulence. 

Coincidentally, this discovery was around the time that Aziraphale was doing the exact same thing to him. Being a pillow. Not literally, of course - but by that point Crowley was far enough gone to have been fine with that option as well.

It happened, as most things did for them, over dinner.

“I’m just saying,” Crowley was saying. “You like food, you like wine, you like reading, you like theatre - why not sleep?”

Aziraphale shook his head and raised his cup to his lips to take a hearty sip. “I’ve already told you,” he replied patiently. “Takes too much time.”

“Explain,” demanded the demon, reaching across his elbow and snagging a bunch of grapes off of the angel’s plate. This earned him a glare, but it was not intense enough to even inspire an itch of Divine Discomfort. 

“I can do my job while eating,” Aziraphale said. “I can do it while drinking. Doing so allows me to get closer to the humans I am to influence. Going to the theatre, reading, knowing them - all these things help me do my angelic duties! But sleep - sleep takes too long. I can’t do anything else if I’m asleep, and it means I’ll have wasted that time when I could just as easily be doing something else. Doing good.” He gently batted Crowley’s fingers away from his plate and eyed a dripping golden honeycomb on the demon’s own side of the table as if planning a retaliation. “There’s no merits to sleep.”

“Sure there are,” said Crowley, leaning back in his seat. He popped a grape into his mouth. “All humans sleep. If you never do, they’ll get suspicious.”

“I can fake sleep well enough when I need to,” Aziraphale said. “And if I need to pretend for a longer time, I just read.”

“But you haven’t really tried it, have you? What if you like it?”

The angel glanced up at him. “I have tried plenty, I assure you. I didn’t enjoy the experience, and I didn’t enjoy the arrangements. Those sleeping bricks they rest their heads on - pillows? - are dreadful, for a start-”

“Ah,” Crowley interrupted, tightening his grip on the conversation like a fisherman on a carefully strung net. “But that’s the thing. They’ve got new ones. New pillows. Very soft. Very comfortable. Top of the line. Made of cloth, these pillows. Straw in them! They’re supposed to be all the rage.”

“That’s lovely,” Aziraphale remarked, but his attention was still on the food. He was eyeing the honeycomb again. “Good for them, I suppose.”

Crowley reached out and pulled the platter that housed the sugary treat a little further out of the angel’s reach. “It _ is _ good. That’s why you ought to give it another go.”

“Maybe another time,” Aziraphale said. He had casual stubbornness down to a science, it would seem. “Besides, I’m not particularly tired right now.”

“But you will be after you drink.”

“That’s because I’ll be drunk. When I sober up, it stops being an issue.” Aziraphale wiggled his shoulders impatiently and his gaze flipped like a switch from Crowley to the honeycomb and then back to Crowley again. “Are you by chance going to...?”

The demon ignored him. “The reason I’m asking,” he explained, although Aziraphale had long ago given up on the practice of requesting explanations for his array of odd suggestions, “is that I have this room for the night, and I was planning to test out the new pillows myself.”

Aziraphale reluctantly released the honeycomb from his predatory stare. “Oh?”

“Yes, and, well, I thought, if you were interested in drinking a bit longer than an hour, I could certainly let you stay... but if someone comes in to clean up, you see, we’d both have to at least pretend to be sleeping. To not raise suspicions, you see.” Crowley was aware, on some level, that this wasn’t entirely convincing. (The level to which this was an understatement escaped him because he was currently focusing  _ very hard _ .) To distract them both from it, he reached out and ran his fingers along the rim of the platter in front of him. “And I could use the company.” One of his fingers slipped into the golden stuff oozing out of the waxen hexagons. He lifted his hand up to his mouth and pressed his honey-stained pinky to his tongue. It was far too sweet for him, but he dipped it into his mouth regardless and then extracted it just as smoothly, now licked clean. 

Aziraphale watched. His eyes were changing colors again, like something very intense was going on just beneath the surface. At the beginning of the dinner they had been a powdery blue, but they were now shifting into a much sharper cobalt. “It would be a pity not to take advantage of the full course meal,” he admitted reluctantly. 

Crowley smiled, feeling something stirring in his own gut. That same, rolling feeling of triumph of Temptation. “Indeed,” he agreed. 

“And I suppose it’s better if I stay here to thwart your wiles,” Aziraphale added, quite suddenly, of his own accord. 

Crowley tensed. “My wiles? Which ones?” he asked, practically ready to check behind his own shoulder for comedic effect.  _ Wiles? No wiles here. Who saw a wile? _

Aziraphale eyed him, unimpressed. “Really, Crowley. A room, all to yourself? On a warm night like this? In this city?”

The demon felt his chest tighten. Had Aziraphale caught on...? That quickly?

“As if you’d really be alone,” the angel said with a soft snort. “I know you, you old serpent. You must have big plans: seeding vices and all that. I know you’ll have Tempted someone into bed with you within five minutes of my leaving.”

Crowley jerked up from his relaxed slouch, suffering a jolt of offence which was in no way justified. “Would _ not _ !” he protested immediately, and then, before he’d realized it, blurted out the tail-end of the thought that slipped out through momentum: “It’s  _ you _ I’m after, you idiot!”

Immediately after the confession dropped unceremoniously from his teeth, Crowley clicked them shut and waited. Waited for-- for something. For righteous fury, perhaps? Some honest attempt at smiting? 

For a split second, he was actually scared. All the previous 4000 odd years of meeting up and talking and sharing wine flashed before his eyes. Is this what humans saw before they died? A reminder of all they would be losing? 

But then, in the most mysterious way - and the way which would come to be the most standard for Aziraphale over the next 2000 years - none of that happened.

Instead, the angel hummed into his glass of wine, set it down and frowned disapprovingly. “Me? Whatever for?” He even had the gall to shake his head and tut. “That won’t work, Crowley, and you know it.” And then, even more incredibly, the angel sighed and said: “I suppose it can’t be helped, as that is your job after all. But if it comes between letting you trick me into going unconscious for a few hours and letting you spread some Lust around these streets which - just in my humble opinion - does not need any help from supernatural influences such as yourself... well, I’ll gladly take the lesser of two evils.”

There was a beat of silence, during which Crowley struggled to reconcile his confession with the nonchalant reaction. Here he was, being his usual demonic self - Tempting, being enticing, a little bit sexual... and the best he’d gotten out of an Angel of the Lord was a finger-wag and a soft ‘oh  _ you _ ’?

Imagine reaching for a jug full of water. 

You stretch out your hand, open your fingers, and grasp the handle. All of your muscles strain in preparation for a specific amount of weight, calculating the strain necessary to lift the thing you are looking at. You know it must be heavy, because you have lifted these jugs before. You are armed with the knowledge of a precise amount of strength to exert, and you act accordingly. 

But instead, when you pull the jug up against gravity, it turns out to be empty. And before you even realize your error, you have sent the thing flying across the room because you’d yanked it from the table too damn hard.

That was rather how Crowley felt at this moment. 

He had gone out on a limb for this one! He’d gathered all of his evil-doing intent for the year and pooled it into this one encounter, psyching himself up, telling himself it would be worth it, that his irresistible urge to bother the hell-or, er, heaven, rather-out of the angel was surely a side-effect of a vice he was picking up on. He had aimed his punch, lined it up, and gave it his best shot and instead--instead...!

Aziraphale had taken the blow: softly. Without even seeming bothered. And instead of hitting a wall of divine resistance that Crowley had been prepared to shatter, he had lost step and had fallen into a soft.... something. 

Not a wall. Aziraphale didn’t have walls. He had-- He was... A pillow.

“Something the matter?” Aziraphale asked. His gaze had not lost its brilliant color, but his voice was still just as warm and inviting, as if they were two old friends chatting over wine. About Tempting. And Lust. And testing pillows. 

Crowley threw his head back, shoved the heel of his hand into his eyes for a moment, and allowed himself a groan of frustration that resonated, he hoped, in the deepest parts of Hell. “Nothing,” he muttered. “Glad you’re down for the pillow testing.”

Across the table, he could hear Aziraphale chuckling knowingly. “Anytime.”

When he looked back down, he realized the honeycomb was gone. It wasn’t on the other side of the table either, but there was a condemning drop of gold on the corner of the angel’s lip. He looked  _ very _ pleased with himself. 

“I was going to eat that,” Crowley lied. 

Aziraphale’s eyes crinkled just a bit, and his next smile was positively impish. “Very sorry, my dear,” he lied back. 

Crowley burned.

***

The next time Aziraphale called to him at the crest of a hill and Crowley announced he would be changing his name, the angel had asked him wryly if he would be called Asmodeus. The quip, although it was quickly overshadowed by a much darker conversation, did not go unnoticed. It also did not go unnoticed when Aziraphale very smoothly invited him to eat oysters less than a decade after that. 

Their dance - the only dance they would ever be good at in all their time on earth - grew more complex. They met more. Talked more. Sought each other out after significant events. And all the while, Crowley, having abandoned his previous plan to drag Aziraphale to Hell just to see if he could, instead took up a far more architecturally minded work of building a shelter from Heaven and Hell’s annoying assignments. 

The Arrangement. 

Because, really, if there was one thing he’d learned over the years on his bloody planet is that he didn’t quite enjoy all the blood. In fact, it was much more fun to stretch out the Temptations, to stop and smell the roses, to eat the occasional local dish, and to get piss drunk with the only being he’d ever felt close to in his entire immortal lifetime. 

Oh, he still did his work as a demon, of course, that was a given. But what sort of demon would he be if he was devoted to his work? Devotion, after all, was a virtue. And if he really wanted to go all out, be demonic about things, why not be demonic towards everything - including Hell itself? If rebelling against Heaven was good - er, bad - surely rebelling against Hell was a logical next step. 

As for how attached he was getting to a certain angel in the process... that was beside the point, really. Unimportant. Their relationship was an organic byproduct, not anything significant, not anything to be paid any mind to.

He liked fun. Aziraphale was fun. He liked Aziraphale.

He  _ liked _ Aziraphale. 

Liked him enough to go eat dinner with him, even after everything. Liked him enough to get drunk with him. Liked him enough to stupidly begin to blabber Ye Olde Good And Evil discussion at him, like he was still on duty in the Garden and he had just decided to reinstate himself as a landlord of the Apple Tree You Should Not Eat From. 

He had liked the angel enough to get angry when Aziraphale suggested he was merely a collection of demonic chain reactions. A snowball which could not stop its trajectory. A limp puppet in the hands of Morningstar. 

And that was the pinnacle of the worst of it - who was to say he wasn’t? The problem was, Falling had never gotten him the answers to the questions he had risked everything for. There wasn’t ever any resolution. He thought for a hot second there might be - but those were the last phantom limb pains of Heaven’s Grand Design, the expectation of something being there which he had specifically cut himself off from. 

Hell had no design; that was the whole point. It wasn’t just a mirror side - wasn’t just a Heaven with a Goth lean (although over the millenia, some occupants had made a damn good pass of making it just that). That was what it had all been about. Everything was open ended. Vast. Limitless. Meaningless. No System, No Commandments, No Pillars, No Outlines or Blueprints. Empty. 

For angels which had not known such a concept, it had been too much to grasp. 

He wondered sometimes if it was really the Fall itself that ruined them. Perhaps it was the Landing that did them in. Coming to and realizing that there was Stuff - or the lack of it, more precisely - that was beyond what you ever thought possible. The nothingness of everything you knew and had thought was integral, like Structure and Connection and Trust - was actually just a box you had been living in that whole time, and now you were out of the box, and you rather thought ‘ _ no, this is too much, I’d like to crawl back in there now, I’m feeling quite overwhelmed, thank you _ ’. 

And he had been stupid enough to try to communicate that to an Angel - even though he knew, he  _ knew _ ! it could never be possible. It would be like trying to explain the concept of colors to a deep sea creature which had evolved specifically not to have eyes anymore. The best case scenario was that even if you somehow succeeded, you would only make things worse for that specific creature. It would be stuck on the bottom of the ocean with nothing but black for miles and miles, and suddenly aware of its utterly dreary situation with a specific lack of the very thing you’d made it aware of. 

Even if it wasn’t Falling, it was very close to it. Possibly worse. And would he wish that upon Aziraphale? 

No. He was loathe to admit it, but lying to himself was pointless.

Because over his 5000 years of being on Earth, the very purpose of which was to make life difficult for the angel, he had failed to ever summon enough motivation to do that very thing. He enjoyed Aziraphale’s company more than his suffering. He couldn’t even stand to see the bloody bastard pouting for longer than two minutes and thirty four seconds (that was the current record, and it had not been challenged for the past 800 years). He enjoyed Aziraphale’s company, and Aziraphale - he (very quietly) hoped - enjoyed his company in kind.

_ Would all of that come to an end now? _ he wondered, back on the edge of the crumbling wall. It reminded him a bit of Eden. That didn’t help the internal turmoil much. 

He looked east. Somewhere beyond the desert, beyond the mountains, was the unfurling Liao Dynasty. He’d heard good things about the life there, heard of some interesting philosophies he could really dig his nose into and go wild. It would be fun, and it might take his mind off of his colossal failure for a while. 

But it also meant running away from Aziraphale and leaving him with Nanael and the consequences of that particular debacle, which was

Fine. 

It was Fine. 

He was Fine with it. 

He was a demon. Leaving an Angel to deal with the embarrassing aftermath of letting his prisoner escape out from right under his very nose would be the perfect ending to his temper tantrum back at the restaurant. Surely it was the cherry on top of the metaphorical cake of disappointment and hurt Aziraphale must be feeling at this moment. Betrayal - utter betrayal, even after the promise to stick around and help out - would be a great epilogue to this particular chapter of his life. He would be absolutely broken up about it. He might even cry. It would be excellent. Crowley would be the cause of all of that... bad stuff. 

And that was what Crowley did, wasn’t it? Bad things. Because he was a demon. 

He kicked a rock off of the wall absentmindedly and curled his upper lip. He also glared at a very small animal skittering along the dune to his left, and then glared up at the stars, for good measure. 

They did not glare back.

The chain around his left wrist, which had now lost its connection with its other half, itched guiltily. He reached down and ran his fingers over the loop, and then down to the severed link that he had easily wrenched apart during his dramatic disappearing act. 

Aziraphale didn’t even try to hold him back. What a stupid charade it had been. They were acting like children, playing pretend with magic and spells that weren’t even there. Now all he had left was the feeling that something - probably his conscience, curse it - was tugging him back, as if the chain’s fake connection somehow held strong across the miles and miles of sand back in Bukhara. 

_ No, hold on _ , thought Crowley. _ I don’t have a conscience. And it really is quite itchy _ . 

He looked down at the bracelet and first thought that the moonlight was reflecting off of it in a particularly effective way. But there was no moonlight - it was a new moon. On the contrary, the chain seemed to be producing some sort of glow of its own. It was a very dim one for now, but the longer he stared at it with a confounded expression, the brighter it shined. And then it began vibrating. 

“That can’t be good,” said Crowley to no one in particular, right before he was yoinked across 1000 kilometers in the exact direction he would have eventually ended up going anyway.

**Author's Note:**

> Intrigued? Have things you wanna yell about? Find me on tumblr! - [@thechekhov](http://www.thechekhov.tumblr.com)


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